eCommerce Times: Web Publishers Fear 'A Little Sharing'

Password sharing is on the rise for access to registration-only or subscription-only web content. And, surprisingly to many web publishers, there doesn't seem to be any legal mechanism to prevent people from distributing their own passwords to others. Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig told eCommerce Times that publishing passwords to protected sites crosses no legal lines. One site, BugMeNot.com, distributes keys to more than 30,000 sites.

This puts a fly in advertisers' ointments when they rely on registration surveys to determine what sort of viewer is watching particular sites. Publishers rely somewhat on registrants' reluctance to share their own particular passwords, especially where that password grants access to personal account information that can include credit card numbers.