It’s also affected by the value of the software. Sun’s operating system and compilers, for example — yeah, I’ll fill out contact info for that, because I recognize that it’s a quite substantial bit of software that they’re giving me in return. A small utility that I’ll use for five minutes … not so much. And registration forms for hardware drivers annoy me; I’ve already paid the company for the driver by using their hardware.

Also, I suspect that the numbers get skewed a bit, by people doing multiple downloads (or not). I know that I’ve downloaded PuTTY a couple of dozen times in the last three years, just because it’s easier to downloaded it than carry around a copy. If they wanted me to fill out a registration every time, I’d carry around the copy instead.

Correct, I absolutely hate giving away my real email address and even worse my real world address. I will always use a fake address if they want an address and there’s no physical shipping involved and will always use a webmail based email address (preferably an anonymous one) when an email address is required for something.

I have been burned before where I’ve been deluged with spam and junk mail when my details were sold on.

Unless the company wants to contact people who do not want to be contacted, I don’t see how anything more intrusive could be helpful… But maybe I’m missing something.

As for my specific predelections, I’m very happy to join the mailing lists of musical groups I value, I would generally join announcement lists for software I use (although it’s not always that obvious, so often I forget to), and I would simply enter a fake (or temporary, if necessary) email in any form that required such before letting me download something.

Requiring contact info to recieve a download is more or less pointless, as it’s trivial to submit false details if you choose.