Read articles without annoying paywalls
We’ve all been there: we’re scrolling and come across a news article that grabs our attention. Curiously, we click the link only to be blocked by a paywall. Suddenly you’re faced with the decision: subscribe, perform a Google search for a free version, or abandon reading it altogether. But there’s another option: bypassing those paywalls to read the content for free.
Simple powershell script
This script just does the following:
- Get the page in question
- Save the content locally
- Open the local page using your browser
This relies on the fact that Paywall are using cookies to check if you are subscribed, when you save the page locally, the checks normally done when you are onine are not done, so you can view the page. Simple, but it works.
Note that some pages will not display properly, you can see/read the text but some image ae not placed corectly like in the https://washingtonpost.com
> Invoke-BypassPaywall "https://washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/07/israel-gaza-hamas-attack-palestinians/
CODE
function Invoke-BypassPaywall{
<#
.SYNOPSIS
Invoke-BypassPaywall on a URL
.DESCRIPTION
Invoke-BypassPaywall opens a webpage locally after having downloaded the HTML code
.PARAMETER URL
The URL to open
.EXAMPLE
>> This will to a generic search on the film Star Wars
.\Invoke-BypassPaywall www.nytimes.com/article.html
#>
[CmdletBinding(SupportsShouldProcess)]
param(
[Parameter(Mandatory=$true, ValueFromPipeline=$true, HelpMessage="url", Position=0)]
[string]$Url
)
# New Random Filename
[string]$epoch_str = (get-date -UFormat %s) -as [string]
[string]$fn = "{0}\bypasspaywall_{1}.html" -f "$ENV:TEMP", $epoch_str
Write-Host -n -f DarkRed "[BypassPaywall] " ; Write-Host -f DarkYellow "Invoke-WebRequest -Uri `"$Url`""
$Content = Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "$Url"
$sc = $Content.StatusCode
if($sc -eq 200){
$cnt = $Content.Content
Write-Host -n -f DarkRed "[BypassPaywall] " ; Write-Host -f DarkGreen "StatusCode $sc OK"
Set-Content -Path "$fn" -Value "$cnt"
Write-Host -n -f DarkRed "[BypassPaywall] " ; Write-Host -f DarkGreen "start-process $fn"
start-process "$fn"
}else{
Write-Host -n -f DarkRed "[BypassPaywall] " ; Write-Host -f DarkYellow "ERROR StatusCode $sc"
}
}
