One large downside is that publishers whose paywalls are being circumvented by the act of submitting to HN, would consider legal action against HN.

Why isn't that already an issue then? archive.is links remain, despite being easy to otherwise detect?

IANAL, but it would seem to me HN couldn't be liable, since it is a third party (archive.is/org) caching the site. In fact, I always assumed that's why the links aren't removed.

I am also not a lawyer, but I would guess that a court might differentiate between choosing not to actively scour user generated content for archive links, versus choosing to proactively provide those links.

I'd guess otherwise.

To expand on this; I don't think other forms of active moderation get this pass, you don't get to harbour copyrighted IP, CPP or other illegal material posted on a forum by just not moderating.

further, if intent would be a possible defence, I already mentioned that archiving everything looks better than only having links when there are paywalls, active or otherwise.

from a moral position, I don't think HN moves the needle wrt enabling bypassing - most if not all HN users are likely fully capable of using archiving sites themselves, if not automating the process themselves.

I don't think morality has anything to do with HN's action/lack of action here. They are likely just balancing risk & reward.

How much work to enable auto paywall busting? >$0

How much reward? $0

How much extra risk that a publisher will make your life difficult, regardless of morality or the letter of the law? >0%

I can't imagine why they would bother when HN users seem happy enough to do the work for free.

Does Singapore force people to be bus drivers?

Once you have banned protest, how would you know if they were forced or not?

EVERYONE IS HAPPY.

Sounds like you haven't been to Singapore.

Not sure why you’d say that. Did you see protests or Something?

People will do anything to escape the fruits of marxism. Discoursers today should take note!

I think it’s pretty interesting.

And I think the parallel between school shootings and dogs is actually pretty close. In both cases, the problem is government caving to people who demand the right to own dangerous objects/animals, regardless of the risk to others. Culture plays a role in both, and mental health, doubtless plays a role in both.

The vast majority of people cheering on Iranian protesters don’t know anything about Ian’s oil. The see people in the street protesting their theocratic regime and they cheer them on. To imagine that these voices are all just oil puppets is the stuff of leftist group think.

Your comment wasn’t censored, your fellow readers flagged it because they thought it was bullshit.

I think it’s just bog standard, “USA bad, not USA good” thinking.

Regulating prices doesn’t do that.

If all we do is regulate prices, then there’s still an incentive to despoil the environment if it lowers your costs.

What you want to do is to mandate prices on externalities – the pollution itself. That way people are still free to buy and sell TVs and to innovate new ways of manufacturing them, but the only way to avoid the cost of externalities is to generate fewer externalities - less pollution per TV – which is what we want.

The vast majority of land in the country has been owned by capitalistic profit motivated players since 1776 - individual home owner occupiers.

If you doubt they will lobby to increase their profit, try proposing anything that has a 0.1% risk of their property value going down and see how they react.