Unobfusticate the Australian Financial Review

Posted on February 9, 2008. Filed under: Internet Technology | Tags: AFR, deofuscator |

If you follow Australian news online news, you probably know that the Australian Financial Review locks up most of its online content to paid subscribers only. Recently they’ve been loosening up this policy somewhat - so you’ll sometimes see AFR content posted over at the website of sister magazine, MIS.

But the AFR seems pretty attached to its online copy. So much so that recently it’s begun “obfuscating” its pages so that if you select text in the browser (or view source), it litters the text with “ ” converting it to unreadable gibberish - presumably to stop people cutting and pasting their content.

This is bizarre - often people like to cut and paste to read later, or to email to a friend to tell them about the article, or to quote in their blog. Enter the Deobfusticator - a website created by Lindsay Evans which lets you enter an AFR URL and get a page of readable text in return. Thanks for helping us keep the Fin somewhat user friendly, Lindsay.