I definitely agree that it should have been spelled out more clearly than it was; in most of my emails to Apple I suggested that they launch it as a “new feature” or “improvement” with a logo and a catchy name so when people first hear about it, it will be in a positive light of what it does for them (better recommendations) rather than a negative light (see: this paranoid article). Yes, the corporations want information about our behaviour so that they can get us to spend more of our money on their products — but the more information they have about us, the more likely they money we’re spending is on something we REALLY want, rather than just whatever they decided got the advertising dollars this year (see: the publishing industry). iTMS probably has 20k songs in its 2m+ song library that I’d love, but without better recommendations, there’s no way for me to find them … and try to find the $20k it would cost to buy them.

Looks like their supposedly legal services come prepackaged with spyware, heh.