A group of news organizations has successfully shut down 12ft.io, a website that circumvented paywalls, allowing users to access premium content for free. The News/Media Alliance announced that the site’s host took it down following their complaints. 12ft.io, also known as 12 Foot Ladder, functioned by masking users’ browsers as search engine crawlers, effectively bypassing paywalls and ad trackers.
Thomas Millar, the site’s creator, claimed he developed the tool to address the prevalence of paywalled content in Google search results. He later introduced subscriptions to cover the operational costs.
The News/Media Alliance described 12ft.io as offering ‘illegal circumvention technology’ and vowed to pursue similar action against other paywall-bypassing services. They have also voiced concerns about Google’s AI Overview feature, arguing that it diverts traffic away from news publishers’ websites.
“Publishers invest heavily in producing high-quality, informative content, and unauthorized tools like 12ft.io jeopardize their revenue streams from subscriptions and advertising,” stated Danielle Coffey, president and CEO of the News/Media Alliance.