[RobFreundlich]

The solution to this problem turned out to be "call the Boston Globe".

I ran Fiddler last night so my download could get past the error, and when I looked at the paper this morning, most of the articles read "You have exceeded your monthly allocation of free articles. Please create an account or log in." Since I have an account, something was clearly amiss.

I called the Globe, and they said that Wednesday night they had done a "system wide purge, so any account with a glitch is showing up now". Speaking as someone who's done tech support, I can honestly say that sounds like code for "we screwed something up and are going to try to dazzle the customer with technobabble while we fix their problem." They fixed my logon, and everything works again.

So, to any future reader who is finding this thread in the hope of getting a solution to a remotely closed connection, I apologize, because there's no technical solution here. But maybe your solution will be as simple as mine.