Oh, brother... this is what we were supposed to be so worried about? Last week we mentioned that Buy.com was reportedly going to be launching its own digital music download service today, beating iTunes for Windows to market by as many as five months-- and that was allegedly cause for much hand-wringing and Rolaids-chewing. Buy.com, you see, was rumored to be copying the iTunes Music Store's 99 cents per song/no monthly fee business model, and the concern was that "iMusic" (as the service was widely expected to be named) would basically give Windows users exactly what Apple had been planning to offer-- just five months earlier.

Well, it's here, and it's not called "iMusic"-- it's called BuyMusic, which isn't quite as shameless as we'd expected. And, truth be told, there are actually some nice things about what this new service has to offer. For one thing, there's plenty of music; speculation last week centered around whether Buy.com had any licensing agreements in place with the record labels, and the answer is apparently a big fat yes, seeing as BuyMusic has some 300,000 songs from all five majors. That's a darn sight more than the 200,000 Apple had at the iTMS launch. (Yes, 100,000 is "a darn sight." You learn something new every day.) And, it turns out, BuyMusic is looking to undercut Apple's 99 cent price by over 20%, also known in the scientific community as "a hefty chunk." Songs are 79 cents, albums are $7.95. Sounds like the iTMS is boned, right?

But hooooo mama, BuyMusic! How dost thou suck rocks audibly? Let us count the ways. First and foremost, folks, be advised that BuyMusic was too lame to wrangle consistent licenses for all songs, so those 79-cent songs? You may be looking for a while before you find one. We saw lots and lots of 99-cent ones, though-- and a few that were even more expensive. (That isn't stopping BuyMusic from shouting "79 cents per song" from the rooftops, however-- and the Associated Press is only making it worse by reporting that songs are 70 cents. Fact checker, shmact checker.) Secondly, actual terms of use vary song by song (!); some songs are almost as open as iTMS offerings, but others (for example, the songs on Liz Phair) are usable on only ONE computer-- the one on which you purchased and downloaded the song. Forget about even transferring it to another computer. Compare that to Apple's "any three Macs, changeable at any time" deal.

Burning to CD-R? As few as three times for some BuyMusic songs, unlimited for iTMS tracks. How about transfer to a portable player? You can only transfer some BuyMusic tracks we looked at three times; there are no restrictions on how often you want to transfer your iTMS music, or even on the number of iPods to which you want to transfer it. And speaking of the iPod, BuyMusic uses Microsoft's WMA as its file format, so none of its 300,000 songs will play on the world's best and most popular portable digital music player. Then there's the fact that the service was down for several hours this morning; guess Apple wasn't kidding when it said that solving the bandwidth and server load issues wasn't trivial.

Of course, the fact that BuyMusic is a sad little shadow of the iTMS isn't stopping Buy.com from trying to make people think that it's just as good, and possibly even somehow related; faithful viewer Brad Weston points out that even their commercials are unabashed carbon copies of Apple's, with some not-so-subtle digs at Apple ("Music downloads for the rest of us"). (Interestingly enough, even the songs in their commercials aren't 79 cents, as BuyMusic would have people believe-- one is 99 cents and another isn't even available.) So is this is a threat to the Windows version of the iTMS? Not likely, unless BuyMusic improves dramatically by then. Then again, Windows users are used to getting jerked around by services like this, so who knows? We just hope that Apple does everything it can to distance itself from this travesty, because otherwise BuyMusic is going to make people think the iTMS for Windows sucks before it even sees the light of day.

Aside from the anti-Mac digs in the commercials, we've also got Buy.com's Scott Blum telling the press that Steve Jobs is "on the wrong platform." Hmmmmmm. Down here at the AtAT compound, we're planning to buy a bunch of music from the iTMS today in a show of support for the "wrong platform," in hopes of sending BuyMusic a message. Wouldn't it be nifty if our "wrong platform" with its measly 2.3% market share managed to make the iTMS more successful than BuyMusic on its own launch date? Maybe it's a pipe dream, but heck, there are a few albums we've been meaning to buy anyway-- might as well make it today, if there's the teensiest chance of making Blum look like even more of a jackass. Who's with us?

Forgive us, folks, we just can't seem to get off this whole BuyMusic.com thing. We just stumbled across a USA Today article on the new venture and there are a few things in there we just can't let pass without comment. Like, say, the title. "Unlimited downloads are now PC"? What exactly about BuyMusic can be described as "unlimited download"? This isn't an all-you-can-listen-before-the-company-goes-under subscription service, it's a pay-per-song deal. Color us confused.

Moving on, the confusion in the press over just what it is that BuyMusic is offering continues apace; first there was that Associated Press article claiming that all of BuyMusic's 300,000 songs were 70 cents apiece; USA Today gets the price right ("as little as 79 cents each, though most sell for 99 cents or $1.19"), but claims that BuyMusic has "350,000 songs." We realize that most of these articles need to be written ahead of time, but is there a particular reason why they can't be edited for accuracy once the real deal is in big green and yellow letters on the BuyMusic home page? Yeesh.

Next, there's the question of just which recreational narcotic Buy.com's Scott Blum is abusing; the guy actually claims to be prepared to sell 1 million songs a day. Tough talk from a guy whose servers unceremoniously soiled themselves for several hours on their first day of business. "I expect to do 200 million to 300 million downloads in the first year," he says. Mmmmm, yeah. Whether or not he's really got the infrastructure in place to move roughly 3 terabytes of data every day, we'll be pretty surprised if demand levels out to much more than a tenth that after the initial launch-- once people realize just how little they're getting for their money.

More on the "What Is Scott Blum Smoking?" front: you just gotta love the guy's comments about the iPod. When confronted with the fact that BuyMusic's songs won't work on an iPod, he actually described the top-selling digital music device by saying "it's like building the best car in the world, yet it doesn't use everyone's gas." Okay, Scott, so what you're saying is that Microsoft's WMA format (what BuyMusic uses) is "everyone's gas"? Funny, we'd have thought it was MP3. (Or 87 octane unleaded.) You do realize that the iPod works just fine with MP3s and Windows, right? Scott? Exhale, buddy, exhale!!

Then there's the business of advertising: BuyMusic is kicking off with a "$40 million ad campaign," which, in addition to mocking Apple's own iTunes Music Store, apparently focuses largely on "near-naked rocker Tommy Lee," including his oh-so-charming likeness on the "world's largest billboard" in Times Square. Come on, guys, haven't the good people of New York City suffered enough in the past few years? Meanwhile, EMI's Ted Cohen asserts that "the reason Apple has done so well is they've advertised it really well." What do you think, people? Is this the first time that anyone has accused Apple of "advertising well"? We thought the AppleMusic.com commercials were cute, but we certainly wouldn't describe them as "pervasive." We think the iTMS has done really well because Mac users know a good value when they see it.

Whatever. We're done for now, mostly. Gee, we think we just got a full week's worth of rants finished up in one day-- woo-hoo, early weekend and party at the beach!

If anything, it's probably overly restrictive and confusing Digital Rights Management (formerly known by the less euphemistic term "copy protection") that'll eventually doom BuyMusic.com to mediocrity at best, as Wintellians get fed up with needing to remember which songs they can still burn how many times, which songs they're allowed to play on their work computer as well as their home one, which songs they're only allowed to play twice every other Thursday while wearing purple socks and shrieking like a howler monkey, etc. Eventually we imagine most of them will just scrap the whole thing and either buy CDs that they can use however they like, or go the traditional route: fire up a peer-to-peer file-swapping application and download unprotected music for free. (Illegally, of course.)

That'll be less of an impulse if iTunes for Windows lives up to its promise, of course, but that's still a ways away, and there's no guarantee that Steve will even be able to secure the same relatively liberal licensing terms from all five major labels for the Windows version. (Only two had signed on so far when last we checked.) Plus, even if it's every bit as lenient as the Mac version, there are always going to be some people who are driven to illegal downloading not because they're frustrated by DRM, but because 1) they're cheap and 2) their mommas done raised 'em wrong. Piracy is indeed a problem for the recording industry, and will always continue to be-- but we figure it's always going to be worse as long as the recording industry itself sees fit to keep curtailing legal fair-use copying in a paranoid attempt to eliminate any and all piracy in the first place. C'mon, you know the drill: how many times have you been tempted to swipe something just because someone told you you couldn't? Heck, that's why we've got a canister of weapons-grade plutonium we're using as a paperweight. ("Impenetrable security" our Aunt Gladys.)

The form of copy protection most of us encounter on a regular basis is technological in nature (e.g. a means by which copyright holders could blow up computers storing illegally reproduced content), but let's not forget about the industry's other Big Stick: the law. Apparently existing copyright law just isn't draconian enough for the recording execs, who pay big money to back new legislation that would allow, say, Metallica to come to your house and beat you with crowbars for having an unlicensed MP3 of "Enter Sandman" on your hard drive. Ha ha! Just kidding! A savage beating by technophobic metalheads for possession of a single pirated song would clearly constitute "cruel and unusual punishment" and as such is expressly prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. So they're just going to toss you in jail instead.

The scary thing is, that's not actually a joke. A couple of congresspuppets just introduced the Authors, Consumer and Computer Owners Protection and Security Act of 2003 (more affectionately known as "ACCOPS" and less affectionately known as "lamebrained unconstitutional nexus of evil"). If passed, this bill would apparently assume that if one file were involved, then surely at least ten must be-- and at a value of $250 per song ("for some reason"), that pushes the offense up to $2500, making it a felony and bringing with it the potential for jail time. Now, don't get us wrong, here; we're all for respecting copyright and all that (we may be the only people on the planet who never used Napster even once; do we get a spot in the Smithsonian?), but any legislation that would automatically make the possession of even a single illegally copied song into a potential jailing offense is clearly the product of a deranged mind. We're not the only ones to think so, either. Apparently-- and this is something we never, ever thought we'd say in this lifetime-- Michael Jackson and we are of one mind.

Yes, folks, that was an awful lot of exposition just to set up this payoff, but it seems that Michael Jackson himself has issued a press release "expressing concern" over ACCOPS. "I am speechless about the idea of putting music fans in jail for downloading music," says the King of Pop. "We should look to new technologies like Apple's new Music Store for solutions." Amen, buddy. And here's the point, so long in coming: if Michael Jackson thinks something is crazy, doesn't that pretty much mean it is crazy? Come on, the dateline on the press release says "Neverland Ranch," for cryin' out loud. The guy practically invented kooky, so we think the politicians should respect his authority and accept his expert assessment of the sheer looniness of the bill. After all, if you're not going to use your national treasures, why have them in the first place? It's just more stuff to dust.