A developer from Kansas has lost his job after created an Chrome extension and uploaded it, which allowed users to bypass the paywall on Kansas.com, the news website for the Wichita Eagle.
Despite the bypass working for two years, Chad Smith was only caught when he updated the extension after the Eagle upgraded its paywall and he updated the extension. The news website were concerned about the “enabling, sharing and promoting of theft from our company” and he subsequently lost his job, even though Smith hadn’t put his company’s name on the extension or his Twitter profile.
He defended himself saying he had not hacked anything, his plug-in just disabled the third-party Javascript and he said users could have done the same thing in their browser settings.
His bosses at the small ad agency Sullivan Higdon and Sink told him the incident constituted a “serious offense” and that he’d jeopardized the company’s relationship with the newspaper and the community.
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