I feel like I read more than 20 articles a month just from various links, but not enough to make it worth $15/mo. If they had some option to increase the number of views for the rest of the month for $5 or less, I'd at least consider it.
Depends on who's links are sending you to the site. From the e-mail I got:
Readers who come to Times articles through links from
search, blogs and social media like Facebook and Twitter
will be able to read those articles, even if they have
reached their monthly reading limit. For some search
engines, users will have a daily limit of free links
to Times articles.
So someone spoofing a referrer link with curl would have free access?
Or are you also checking those referrer links somehow, to make sure they're legitimate?
I also take it from your other reply about curl (https://hackertimes.com/item?id=2336371) that you're using ip address, as opposed or maybe in addition to cookies to enforce the 20 articles per month limit.
First, this isn't a project I worked on directly so bear that in mind in that I cant address specific points (but will update if I learn the answers).
I will say this much; its expected that many people will find away to get around the paywall via plugins, curl, whatever. There are no illusions about that.
However this is not typical of your average user - that much I've seen. While I'm sure this will happen, and it might be easy for many, it will not be something I'd expect of most users and no something that will impact subscriptions IMHO.
I don't think that'll work for me, as I use 3rd-party Twitter clients that won't be able to pass a Twitter.com referrer.
(And unless Twitter whitelists all URL shorteners, the referrer likely wouldn't point back to Twitter anyway. But many of my friends use custom URL shorteners, and the Times wouldn't know to whitelist those… and the list of problems goes on.)
