Reply To: Back issues & Flash plugin

[Gene PavlovskyParticipant @genepavlovsky]

It seems I was wrong.

Recent magazines (MEW 278 and newer) are displayed in a viewer that uses HTML5, and don't require Flash. If you monitor the requests that the viewer makes (using e.g. Chrome DevTools, Network tab), you can find download links for the magazine's individual pages in both jpg and pdf formats. So it's easy to download all the magazine's pages for offline usage, with a simple shell script (even a one-liner command). One file per page, so not 100% convenient, but better than nothing. There should be multiple software packages available that can assemble the individual pages into a single pdf.

Older magazines (MEW 277 and older) try to open the Flash-based viewer. I still have Windows 7 on my main laptop, I just tried Firefox, Chrome and even IE11. All of them fail to open the viewer, and instead redirect to Adobe's Flash End-Of-Life page. It seems to me that the version of Flash Player plug-in that I have installed (quite some time ago) already contains a "time bomb" which results in the player not willing to work any more. Or perhaps it makes a network request to Adobe to see if it should work or redirect to EOL page – I haven't checked. Either way, it seems to me that to make the Flash player work again, it's not a question of using an old OS or a browser. I am guessing that one would need to have a sufficiently old version of Flash Player plug-in.

Personally, when I bought a print+digital subscription, my motivation was having new magazines in print, and digital was to be able to access all the older back issues. This is now impossible and I guess I will buy just the print subscription next time. Luckily there are those crafty pirates who managed to get ALL of those old issues in pdf.

By the way in most of cases pirates are just sharing the files (magazines, music, movies, software), they are not trying to make money by selling the pirated stuff. I think that people who think it's right to buy/subscribe, and have money for that, will do so, even if they know where to download the pirated versions. And the people who for some reason decide to get pirated stuff, in most cases wouldn't buy/subscribe even if the pirated stuff would disappear. They would just live without those things. So I'm also of the opinion that it makes total sense for letting subscribers download the digital versions. The pirates will be able to get the files anyway whether or not they are made available. Time and time again they prove themselves more crafty than the DRM guys…

And something should be done about those archive back issues no longer accessible to subscribers. Sell it as a DVD full of pdf files, offer it as a free download to digital edition subscribers.