WebProNews

The honeymoon's over, the free lunch is now an empty plate, and the online version of the New York Times will cost you $49.95 as of Monday.

The New York Post's online edition seemed happy to point out this nugget just above a registration window reminding readers about how free its news will continue to be.

Starting September 19th, the New York Times will charge for access to the musings of 22 columnists. On the list of $49.95 per year columnists is Tom Friedman, David Brooks, Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman, Bob Herbert, Nicholas Kristof, Frank Rich, metro columnists Dan Barry, Joyce Purnick, Clyde Haberman and Peter Applebome; and sports columnists George Vecsey and Dave Anderson.

While free is better than paying, we should remind the Post that most of us don't like registering, either.

This group has begun a campaign to fight sites that require registration. On November 13th, they plan to bombard registration screens with fake information to thwart their demographic collections. New York Times was number one on the list, addressing a growing angry mob with a move to make them even angrier.

Jason L. Miller is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.