A few tricks for paywalls etc

Disclaimer: It would be of course unthinkable to recommend that any of my fellow infovores use these links to access literally any book or article ever published. What a travesty that would be! What would BigPublisher do? Please treat this post as a warning about all the concerning ways information is freely accessible online.

Books

I assume most of you already know LibGen, but I found out recently that my friend, who’s one of the most voracious readers I know, wasn’t aware of the pirate bay of books Libgen. So I quickly had to warn him about the travesty that you can freely download almost any book in your preferred format.

Journal Articles

Again, most of you know about SciHub. Here’s a how to guide.

Although, the talk is its been a wee bit less reliable recently. Apparently, Anna’s Archive works.

Online article with paywalls

It’s sort of funny that it’s now easier to freely access books and journal articles compared to plain old online essays.

There are a few tricks available. Although, there’s more friction involved they don’t always work..

Substack, nothing much you can do, as far as I know.

A few techniques for other online articles:

1. Archive - the web archive is a great resource. Simply input the url of the essay you want to read in, and either save it or search for it. It should become readable.

2. Incognito - This helps for two problems. If the website isn’t letting you read due to an ad-blocker or because you’ve used up your allotment of free reads. Simply read it in the incognito tab. Plus side is you now have an excuse for why your incognito tab was left open.

3. Removing JavaScript - Disabling JavaScript lets you read a lot of blocked web pages. It will get rid of the pop ups blocking the text. Go into Chrome Settings. Search “javascript” and follow the yellow brick road. Change the setting to disable it, but don’t close your tab. Refresh your other tab that has the essay open that you want to read which should now be readable. Don’t forget to turn JavaScript back on once you’ve finished.

4. Pocket app - If the above two fail, Pocket app might work. This is a fairly useful app anyway to save articles. A useful side benefit is that the articles you save can be read within the app and won’t have the pop ups blocking you from reading.

For example, Anthony Lane in the New Yorker negatively reviews The Revenge of the Sith. It can only be read if you haven’t used up your trial reads. However, you can always read it by using method (2).

But method (2) doesn’t work for Camille Paglia’s positive review of the same movie (that is equally worth reading). In this case, method (3), worked for me.

Cowen’s Straussian take on Star Wars doesn’t have a paywall but just in case you were in the mood. (My gf never watched Star Wars so I’m rewatching them.)