Beth Ann,
1) You don't need to spoof a referer to "beat" this, all you need to do is do a Google search for
"site: www.premium-content-here.com" and then open all the links in a new tab. You then get the referer in a perfecly legimate way, and get access to all the FCF content. Not difficult.
2) How long do you think it would be before browser versions / plugins / mods appear with a "Via Google" button that reloads the page with a Google referer header? Various plugins and browsers already exist to alter these headers (mainly for debugging purposes), and don't require any specialist knowledge.
Subscription/paid sites need signups to be sustainable, and for a key aspect of their business cannot rely on such weak "security".
IMO, a better approach to this would be for search engines to support meta data about content (via the sitemap), which specifies whether or not it's free / signup, which appear in the search results, and allow the searcher to specify preferences about whether they require free/pay/subscribe sites in their results. Robust authentication of googlebot could allow webmasters to permit indexing of a full article whilst retaining it as premium content for customers.
Cloaking content in this way would be far less damaging, as users would be aware that they were about to view a pay / subscription link, and would have the option to filter their search results to restrict these sites if they wished.
If extra processing & development costs are an issue, Google could potentially charge businesses a small amount per clickthrough on links cloaked like this - in the manner of Adwords. The customer would be well aware that the link was pay / register beforehand, so the conversion rates would be high. Google searchers would of course want to be confident that search rankings were not otherwise affected by this, and would be able to filter those results if desired.
Deep / hidden web indexed, customers happy that they are in control of their search results. Businesses happy that their content can be found and conversion rates are high. Google making more money.
Everyone is happy, the world becomes a better place. Free cake for everyone. Steve hailed as saviour of teh interwebs.
Now I'm off to solve the Middle East. What's all the fuss about?
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