Instapundit points out his "Registration Still Required" column at Tech Central Station, which adds yet another pile-on to the long-winded discussion about the number of registrations necessary to read various newspapers on the 'net today.

Publishers absolutely need a way to figure out demographics and get their content paid for, but I do agree that it's unreasonable to think that people are going to register at every single site out there, and keep the logins straight. I'm of the general opinion that if the publishers who run multiple web properties could just aggregate logins so that signing in at one publication gets you in to all the publications, reading news would be a lot less painless. (I believe at least one publisher is already doing this...) If media consolidation does anything for us, this should be it?

[update: August 12, 8:37am] Belo Corporation, owner of Dallasnews.com, Projo.com, and other news companies has this implemented on their websites. I know there is at least one other publisher that has done so - feel free to comment with any others that people are aware of.