back to article Daily Telegraph punishes expats with paywall

There'll be grumbling in Costa del Sol tonight after the Daily Telegraph started charging expats and other folk overseas to read its website. The broadsheet newspaper today introduced a porous, or "metered", paywall similar to the schemes successfully operated by the Financial Times and the New York Times. The Telegraph will …

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  1. Christoph
    WTF?

    Are we to understand that Telegraph readers are too thick to use a proxy to appear to be in the UK?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      The average readership age is probably 75, so yes.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        You youngsters think you know it all - you don't.

    2. FartingHippo
      Alert

      Given the telegraph is read by retired colonels and other 'outraged of Tunbridge Wells' types, I think IT literacy is in very short supply.

      Although to be fair only a small majority of all people would know to use a proxy, and a smaller proportion still would be able to do it (I know, it's not tricky, but there are a shit-load of people who think that a blue 'e' means the internet, and errrr, that's it).

    3. Version 1.0 Silver badge

      Noscript

      Either the pay-wall is not working or else noscript disables it.

  2. Anomalous Cowshed

    Wow a step forward for the liberation of people's minds

    At last, this despicable, fearmongering Internet publication does something positive, cutting down on the number of people who, out of sheer boredom or cluelessness, access its site and gorge their minds with the garbage that it spews out, turning themselves into fearful, biggoted fools. This is a great example for other dismal rags to follow, including the Guardian: make money off fools while setting other people's minds free. What a positive decision, I say.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Expats will already have proxies for viewing BBC iPlayer.

    Shurely shomeone told the Torygraph...?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Expats will already have proxies for viewing BBC iPlayer"

      Well I know I have !

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "Expats will already have proxies for viewing BBC iPlayer"

        I haven't. There's nothing worth watching that can't be sourced elsewhere probably before it even appears on iPlayer.

        1. Chemist

          Re: "Expats will already have proxies for viewing BBC iPlayer"

          Well, we haven't got a TV in Switzerland so the occasional dip into Mastermind, University Challenge, Only Connect etc.makes it well wothwhile

          1. Chemist

            Re: "Expats will already have proxies for viewing BBC iPlayer"

            Just to add - all that's necessary to set the proxy up from the remote computer is :

            ssh -C -D 9999 -pSSHPortNumber -N Username@MyIPAddress

            Password

            Change Firefox proxy to 9999

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: "Expats will already have proxies for viewing BBC iPlayer"

          "There's nothing worth watching..." In your very humble opinion !

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: "Expats will already have proxies for viewing BBC iPlayer"

            >"There's nothing worth watching..." In your very humble opinion !

            Congratulations, you've just shown you can comprehend the first four words of a sentence. Just think, with a great deal of effort, one day you might be able to comprehend a complete sentence.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And nothing was lost.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The lucky, lucky,

    lucky bastards

  6. John Styles

    As this is in the context of the Telegraph

    Shouldn't you be referring to their readers on the Costa etc. as being 'economic migrants'?

    1. Andrew Orlowski (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: As this is in the context of the Telegraph

      Arf!

    2. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: As this is in the context of the Telegraph

      If they aren't already they will be soon.

      25.3% unemployment and rising...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: As this is in the context of the Telegraph

        I would have thought that most ex-pats on the Costa Del Sol wouldn't recognize the Telegraph even if you hit them over the head with it, either the paper version of a tablet whilst browsing the ET. They are mostly DM readers.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: As this is in the context of the Telegraph

          As one of the many erudite, handsome and well-hung ex-pats living on the Costa(ish), I shall attribute your remarks to jealousy.

  7. DrXym

    The funny part is

    The Telegraph has been pandering to the US market for years now with various stories against global warming, evolution and the usual US talking points. Evidence of the success of that can be measured by the frothing batshit insanity in some of the discussion threads.

    I wonder if they're spiting themselves with a paywall since people will just go elsewhere. Its not like there is any shortage of news sites.

  8. Version 1.0 Silver badge

    20 stories a month?

    No worries - I doubt that there's 20 stories worth reading in a month on the paper anyway. It used to be a good paper about 10 years ago but it's been sinking faster than the Tory Party for a while now.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: 20 stories a month?

      Sod the stories, that's 20 Matt cartoons. The newsworthiness of the ET and Alex have been going downhill for quite a long time.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: 20 stories a month?

      The Gardening Section is quite good but the comments sections - oh dear - so many people wanting to protect "the rights of the Indigenous British People" - I didn't know the PIcts had so many fans.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Cool!

    Well that should hopefully put an end to the comments from the foaming mad expats going on about how great it was that they had left Britain. I always thought it couldn't be that great if they still felt the need to comment in the columns of a paper from a country they had left.

  10. James 100

    I still remember, years ago, stumbling across a gaping hole in the Times's implementation of a similar approach, years ago ... just off the plane to the US, I hadn't yet changed the timezone setting on my laptop, and happened to open a Times article - which worked fine, unlike on the desktop machine on the same ADSL line. "Hm, not geotargetting after all" - yep, they were actually using Javascript to check if the machine was set to GMT/BST rather than a foreign timezone! On the plus side, I suppose, that wouldn't be fooled by the obvious approach of using a proxy...

    A weird approach, though: if ads aren't cutting it, why impose charges only on foreign readers? Surely currency etc will be a bigger overhead and barrier there than within the UK! Charging £2 to everyone, I could understand - but why discriminate by country?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    proxy

  12. luxaeternam

    is this even legal

    Won't Brussels have something to say about such blatant discrimination?

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Bypass

    The nytimes.com paywall can be bypassed in Firefox by installing the RefControl addon, and telling it to forge the referer on all requests for nytimes.com to something like http://www.google.com/fuck.you.ny.times. This is because they allow people who find their articles via Google, straight through.

    I wonder if something similar works for The Daily Telegraph.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Bypass

      Or you could just pay if you want to read their articles? People don't write them out of the goodness of their hearts you freeloader. There are plenty of free sites if that's what you're after. Where do people get this sense of 'I should get everything for free' entitlement from?

  14. Tim Worstal

    This is going to be interesting

    Given that I write for the Telegraph sometimes but am indeed in foreign.

    So I won't be able to read the paper I sometimes write for?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: This is going to be interesting

      >So I won't be able to read the paper I sometimes write for?

      I'm sure more than a few of us have sometimes not had clearance to read documents we've written

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    the pink 'un porus paywall is breachable in Android browser by simply erasing history n'cookies, but I stopped reading it ages ago. I haven't bothered to go to all this trouble & expense with the DT!

  16. Arachnoid
    Thumb Down

    Telewho...... does it have a page 3 picture?

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