Would You Like Some Fries With That Download?

vodkamattvt writes The New York Times is reporting that the Walt Disney Company is hoping to replace happy meal toys with portable media players that could hold Disney movies, music, games, or photos. From the article: "The plan could work something like this: A customer enters a restaurant and buys a meal, receiving the portable media player and an electronic code that authorizes a partial download of a movie, video or other media file, which can be downloaded while in the restaurant, according to a United States Patent and Trademark Office application filed by Disney. Then, with each subsequent return, the customer earns more downloadable data, eventually getting an entire movie or game."

Comments

Neat item- ought to be hackable

[Marxist Hacker 42]

And hundreds of geeks start ordering happy meals- not for the meal, but for the WiFi media player, which will soon be hacked to refer to any arbitrary URI, and creative commons content.

Isn't there prior art?

[planetoid]

Aren't "partial downloads" prior art as far back as, oh, the era of the floppy disk? Back when warez wasn't distributed as ISOs but as dozens or hundreds of 1.44MB fragmented compressed files? I even remember downloading Slackware like that back in 1994/1995. What exactly is "new" about this to warrant a patent?

does it come with nutrition splash screens?

[passingNotes.com]

honestly, this kinda crap makes me ill...after hearing more about the mcdonald's and nintendo wifi deal i was already kinda getting heebie jeebies...but this new idea, fast food as a conduit for media distribution - that really is an affront to mankind (uh, okay, that's kinda extreme)...these kids are already struggling with obesity (read the data folks, our kids are mostly fat), and putting more distractions in front of them during quite possibly the only time in which they might eat and interact directly with their parents and siblings is just wrong, absolutely wrong...and since we know it's gonna be all disney ads and crap trailers and advertaintment, what the hell is the point? why not just let the media companies bid directly with parents on ourkids.ebay.com and let parents sell their kids' attention spans in five minute increments to the highest bidding media and product firms?

Reminds me of VHS Tapes

[fohat]

About a dozen years ago Mcdonald's did a campaign with video tapes, something like buy a meal and get a movie for $2.99 (I watched The Adam's Family about 1000 times as a result). I wonder if they ever tried the same concept with DVD's? It seem's a heck of a lot easier for the consumer, and you'd still have people returning to the store to get another DVD.