Does the Financial Times new online content model simply rely on cookies?

A short follow-up to my post on the FT's new model for paid content. It seems the system is now in place, as I got the above screen when accessing a story on the Financial Times website www.ft.com.

Having viewed my "allowence of 5 free articles" the FT asks me to registered in order to view more articles.

But look at this: after removing the FT cookies from my browser I could access again all articles on ft.com without problem.

While one could argue that the average FT reader is not that interested in web site cookies and related technical details I know a number of people who have set their browser to clean up all cookies when the close the browser.

So, instead of read and subscribe it could simple turn into a read, restart your browser and read again. I would say it's a good first step towards a complete free-access content model.

Happy reading :-)