But LWN has a feature specifically for sharing subscriber-only articles on social news sites, and that's why everyone can see this article. Presumably if this is killing them, they'd just turn that feature off.
Fair enough I guess. I don't work for LWN. I just felt slightly guilty by accessing a subscriber link that was probably intended more for "friends of a subscriber" than the whole internet community.
Honestly, though, if LWN was worried about this, they could put some sore of limit on the number of times a subscriber link could be used (per time unit?) or something. I don't think they are, and rightly so: the exposure to their content (which is very good value for the small amount of money they ask subscribers), as well as their liberal policy on these 'friend links' probably lead to more subscribers. Personally, I want to read the LWN articles when they appear there (on their RSS feed, to be precise), and not when someone gets around to posting a link on Hacker News.
