This may, or may not tie in with plans by several ISPs to provide "metered connections" so that you pay more for more bandwidth and for large downloads, or it may be more directly related to the Microsoft "cloud computing" concept in which you would never have a program on you're own computer - you'd just connect to the program on a server (and pay the "rent" for the program use) when you wanted to do something.

Since, aside from a few security improvements, recent Microsoft output makes you computer look like a cheap pin-ball machine but doesn't actually work, at the user interface, as well as the older stuff, they really do need to do something about making junk more profitable. (...?)

Patents can be misleading though. If the patent "claim" omits something that a new "art" might do, then that use isn't patented; so it's the general rule that a filing claims far-reaching things that aren't what the applicant really intends to do and wants to protect. This does look like a lot of other stuff that Mickey's been posturing about recently though.

It's just "pay per view" copied from the cable guys and extended to more objectionable limits, so far as the first-read indicates.

John