E-Media Tidbits

Via Joe Murphy, I learned that the Atlanta Journal Constitution website has escalated the "war" against BugMeNot.com. That's the Web service that allows anyone to bypass mandatory website user registration by offering up fake log-ins and passwords to many sites.

Here's what AJC.com has done: It's added a third log-in field, asking vistors wishing to read an article on the site to type in their first name, in addition to e-mail address and password to log in, or complete a new registration. This has the effect of negating the fake BugMeNot log-in deployed by that free service's users to bypass the approved registration system. Here's an example of the new AJC.com log-in screen:
Here's my opinion (which does not reflect a position on this topic by my employer): This escalates the arms race between the proponents of mandatory website user registration and BugMeNot. The next step is for BugMeNot to figure a work-around for getting into AJC.com without having to register; then AJC.com will tweak some more to defeat BugMeNot's latest salvo.

It continues to be my view that if sites like AJC.com would use voluntary user registration for access to articles, there'd be no "war." My recommendation: Add registration requests at the top of all article text. The annoying requests go away once the site visitor registers; they don't prevent even those who refuse to register from seeing articles. No one goes away from the website angry. Website managers still get their registration data from repeat visitors. I really think it's a better way.