Steve Outing writes on Poynteronline about his difficulties logging in to the San Jose Mercury News site to read an article.

We've all had the frustration of following a link only to be smacked in the face with a 'please login or register to read this article' page. I get that the idea is to obtain valuable demographic info; demographic info that the site publishers use to demonstrate the value of advertising on their site.

But is the info provided of any use? Surely the site owners realize that any demographic info collected in this manner is suspect at best. If people aren't using fake info to breeze past the registrations process, they're bound to be using services such as www.bugmenot.com.

The current registration walls may collect demographics on 100% of the visitors, but all of the info collected is suspect. If you were to link to a reader survey after providing the article they were looking for, maybe only one out of a dozen will respond, but the info you collect will be entirely correct.