What If Online Registration Is Voluntary?

Plenty of people have been talking about just how silly it is for so many newspapers to force registration on users, seeing how it cuts down on the market size to which the paper can sell to advertisers, and drives users to other sites instead, since they don't want to go through the hurdle. It looks like at least one newspaper is looking for a much more reasonable middle-ground. They're asking for voluntary registrations. Basically, you can see the article just fine without registering. They just ask for registration info at the top of the page. You can even make that box go away, if you want. This way, they still get those people just passing-by who would never register, and when people do register, it's likely to be good, targeted data, rather than useless, dirty data.