Interesting tidbit I discovered when developing LazyReadr: nytimes doesn't ask for login if you say you're not a browser. You don't have to say you're a search engine crawler either. Just no user-agent header is enough.
So just register. It's free and they don't spam you. I am sick of people complaining about the NYT; they provide great content and all they want to know is who's reading it. Srsly.
All I said was that it requires a login. As such, my intent was to provide information. Personally, I don't much care.
I choose to login to various places on a case-by-case basis. Usually I simply don't bother, purely because it's more time than I care about, and I have other things to do, other things to read. In this case I put the link to one side to consider later, if I have time.