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The Rise Of Reg-Only Media

Posted by timothy on from the it's-easy-and-it's-the-law dept.

cswiii writes "Following up his article a few weeks ago about the NY Times' loss of prominence across the online medium (previously discussed on /.), Adam Penenberg returns with a much wider assault on the lurch towards reg-only content by Big Media as a whole. I just wonder what Margaret Thatcher would think about purportedly living in Beverly Hills..."

5 of 478 comments (clear)

  1. A junk email address by Anonymous+Crowhead · · Score: 5, Informative

    Is a very small price to pay for free content. Besides, with portals like Google news, if there is a story you are interested in, there is a good chance that several other media outlets have written a similar article.

    1. Re:A junk email address by Haxwell · · Score: 5, Informative

      I'm sure it will be posted elsewhere, but Mailinator.com and Bugmenot.com are the two tools I use to get around that issue.

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      http://www.haxwell.org
    2. Re:A junk email address by AtariDatacenter · · Score: 4, Informative

      They're great. I've installed the Bugmenot plug-in for mozilla. I just right-click on a news page that requires a login, and I use one of the publicly shared usernames and passwords. Perfect!

  2. Re:Innacurate by Hatta · · Score: 4, Informative

    I just plug the desired URL into google and follow the link. That never fails, bugmenot seldom works.

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    Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
  3. An alternative to registering... by Maestro4k · · Score: 5, Informative
    There's a site that addresses this problem, it's called Bug Me Not. Just go to it, type in the URL of the site wanting a registration and it'll pull up a generic one that's been submitted. Use that to log in and you can read the article, no personal info given up. It's a community site so if a login stops working another one will be created and added.

    Using Bug Me Not will likely help a lot. When the sites realize that they can't control logins and they have dozends, hundreds or even thousands logged in with the SAME info, they'll know it's not helping them in any way. What'll happen next remains to be seen, but I doubt they'll pull content, it's too ingrained into people's expectations anymore.