News Publishers Take Paywall-blocker 12ft.io offline

The News/Media Alliance, a waste and acquisition relation down awesome news publishers, announced that it has “successfully secured” nan removal of 12ft.io, a website that helped users bypass paywalls online. The waste and acquisition relation says 12ft.io’s webhost took down nan tract connected July 14th “following nan News/Media Alliance’s efforts.”

12ft.io — aliases 12 Foot Ladder — besides allowed users to position webpages without ads, trackers, aliases pop-ups by disguising a user’s browser arsenic a web crawler, giving them unfettered entree to a webpage’s contents. Software technologist Thomas Millar says he created nan tract erstwhile he realized “8 of nan apical 10 links connected Google were paywalled” erstwhile doing investigation during nan pandemic.

Over nan past decade, nan online publishing business exemplary has go progressively unstable. For galore years, websites gave readers free entree because they were supported by advertizing revenue, which is limited connected pageviews. But arsenic postulation has fluctuated, successful ample portion owed to changes to Google’s Search algorithm and an expanding displacement toward AI search, galore magazines, including The Verge, person diversified their business to go much limited connected subscriptions and paywalls to support themselves. The attempts for publishers to go much sustainable person besides led to an net that is little unfastened and accessible — a title that Millar’s task is responding to.

Still, successful an ironic twist, Millar began asking users to salary for a subscription to 12ft.io to thief screen nan costs of nan instrumentality successful 2022. “I’m making it my ngo to cleanable nan web,” Millar said astatine nan time.

In its announcement, News/Media Alliance says 12ft.io “offered forbidden circumvention technology” that allowed users to entree copyrighted contented without paying for it. The statement adds that it will return “similar actions” against different sites that fto users get astir paywalls. The News Media Alliance recently called Google’s AI Mode “theft.” (Like galore chatbots, Google’s AI Mode eliminates nan request to sojourn a website, starving publishers of nan pageviews they request to beryllium compensated for their work.)

“Publishers perpetrate important resources to creating nan champion and astir informative contented for consumers, and forbidden devices for illustration 12ft.io undermine their expertise to financially support that activity done subscriptions and advertisement revenue,” News/Media Alliance president and CEO Danielle Coffey said successful nan property release. “Taking down paywall bypassers is an basal portion of ensuring we person a patient and sustainable accusation ecosystem.”

Disclosure: The Verge’s genitor company, Vox Media, is simply a personnel of nan News/Media Alliance.