Yeah, usually you have to either get an invite code (they're usually pretty easy to get ahold of, though), or buy an account. I rather think they saw it coming, really — there's been protest about the changes-to-come (now changes-please-to-change-back-now) for the last week or so, and DW has probably planned this open week so it could welcome all disgruntled LJ users. ):

It didn't screw up ToNC per se — but switching to customized comment pages would have screwed it up if I didn't change layouts. Hence, this new one. It's not perfect, but it's clean enough to read, and it's the widest I could find.

Which ficmeme is that? all of those I was followed have switched to either old Magazine layouts or these new Minimalist ones.