Buy.com's music deal even more restrictive

Much as I'd like to see somebody give Apple some competition and drive the price of tunes down, these guys come across as a bad mixture of cluelessness and ripoffitude. Have you seen their commercial?

8:40:03 PM    

5,754,939: SYSTEM FOR GENERATION OF USER PROFILES FOR A SYSTEM FOR CUSTOMIZED ELECTRONIC IDENTIFICATION OF DESIRABLE OBJECTS

As far as I can tell, Claim 1 of this patent, filed for in 1995 exactly mimics 212-ROMANCE's collaborative filtering feature from 9 years earlier, and also mimics and embodiment described Hey's 1989 patent (in your browser, search that link for the words "remote user" to find the network-related embodiment). In other words, a lawyer should begin preparing a case to put this patent to rest.

2:26:37 PM    

In contrast, Apple's system is extremely simple and consistent. Those are things Steve Jobs is obsessive about achieving in everything he does. The difference is not dissimilar to the overwhelming superiority of the Mac compared to DOS in 1984. But... that superiority didn't matter then to the general marketplace, and could very well not matter now. Jobs & Co. are going to have to do something different this time. For one thing, they are going to make the iTunes Music Store available on non-Apple computers. But will that be enough, and will they do it quickly enough?

Moreover, at this point, I have seen no evidence that Apple plans to make iTunes Music Store songs work on portable digital music players other than the iPod. In fact, it has been said that Apple plans to make most of its Music Store-related profits on hardware sales. Since the store itself will be cross-platform, it's hard to see what could be meant by that other than a hope to use the Store in maintain their position as the leading supplier of digital music players. But that strategy could backfire badly, just as many have argued that the choice to keep the Mac OS proprietary, while it still had a chance to beat Windows to market on Intel boxes, was the greatest mistake in the history of the company.
10:24:50 AM