Is it ethical to bypass paywalls because I believe in free internet?

I know many will disagree but I feel that stealing something because you feel you should not have to pay for it is absolutley unethical.

There is a completely different question around the ethics of charging for something like information but as I say that is a different question.

Put a second way, would it be unethical to derive a work from a gpl source and simply use whatever licence you wanted because you did not agree with the gpl requirements?

I don’t believe in a free Internet because I don’t think a good Internet can be free. I wish I could subscribe to Instagram if it meant all the crap ads would disappear. But I also don’t respect firewalls because I’m a hypocrite. I do try to mitigate this by funding sites online that could use the money, like Wikipedia way back when, or some blogs/newsletters

Hi. I want to give the following example. In the context of dentistry, the vast majority of information is not free. This information is mainly needed by doctors who want to develop. Mostly novice doctors want to develop. Only experienced doctors can find a good job. Experience is gained only by those who want to develop, but there is no money until you get experience))) I believe that all training data should be free! Definitely ethical!

I don't think your belief in a free internet changes whether its ethical.

Ethical or not, I think bypassing paywalls is a useful societal function because it help so signal to providers that their value proposition is out of whack. What's behind most paywalls is worth literally $0 to me, so the only way I would ever see it is to bypass the paywall.

I used to read the print copy of the economist, not because I couldn't access the articles for free but because it gave me a periodical with curatee articles I could sit and read (when covid started and that's all they could talk about, i cancelled my subscription, I don't need to pay for covid news).

I subscribe to spotify, but because I couldn't find the songs for free but because it's more convenient and gives them to me anywhere at a reasonable cost.

In the case of streaming services, there's an argument that they wouldn't exist if not for Napster et al and that companies would continue to try and rent seek by controlling distribution of content in a way that didn't satisfy consumer needs. The same is true for paywalls - bypassing them is an important forcing function towards a viable business model that delivers content in a way we want.

Is it ok to sneak into a concert?

I believe that bypassing paywalls doesn't rise to the level of notably unethical behavior.

Also - it may be that your justification isn't relevant here.

I won’t get into the ethics of it, but it is impractical to pay for each individual website. Sticking my credit card in for WSJ, NYT, Economist, some random news site, Medium, Substack, it’s just too much.

The business needs to consolidate under one payment portal, and I’d pay a decent amount per year.