Last week’s example: The venture capitalists who plowed another $10 million into MOG, an all-you-can eat Web-based music subscription service.

This week’s example: Thumbplay, which is launching an all-you-can eat mobile music subscription service on Thursday. For good measure, the company is also announcing a big hire this week–it is bringing on Pablo Calamera, an Apple (AAPL) engineer who has been working on that company’s MobileMe service, as CTO.

New York-based Thumbplay used to be known as a big player in the ringtone business, but ringtones were last decade’s Pet Rock, so it needs something new. Music subscriptions certainly aren’t novel, but no one has really been successful with them so far, so this would indeed be a novelty.

Thumbplay’s pitch sounds like those of a lot of its peers. For $10 a month, you can listen to as much music as you want, but you don’t actually own any of the tunes. If you want, you can buy individual songs at the same price points (69 cents to $1.29) used by iTunes. The company says it has licensing deals with all four big labels and a catalog of eight million tracks.

Thumbplay is pitching this primarily as a mobile streaming service, but it will also have a desktop app. The service allows mobile users to cache some of their collection, which means you don’t have to have cell service to hear your tunes. Which means the service passes the subway/airplane/“OMG I hate my wireless company” test.

The main difference between Thumbplay and everyone else is that it’s kicking off its launch by targeting Research in Motion’s (RIMM) BlackBerry users, who have pretty much been ignored by music services to date. Which is not a terrible strategy, really.

But the company also says it will roll out apps for the iPhone and Google’s (GOOG) Android platform later this year and will start testing them in private beta this month.

But how do you find cool music blogs? That’s where Twones, a Dutch start-up wants to come in: It has launched a new service designed to bring you stuff you might like. Or at least that you’ve never heard before.

Sound familiar? It should: You can describe The Hype Machine the same way, and that service is already cherished by Web-savvy music lovers.

And investors, too. But due to worries that it’s a lawsuit waiting to happen, Hype Machine hasn’t attracted any serious money despite four years of accolades.

That’s because the MP3s the music blogs post are almost always copyright violations, technically speaking. That’s not a problem for the blogs because the big labels now tend to turn a blind eye (usually).

But Hype Machine caches those songs, which means you can hear them almost instantly, but which also puts it in a legal gray area (at best). I know of at least a couple prominent investors who are convinced they would be sued as soon as they sent the company a check. So they haven’t.

Back to Twones. The service, which is set up as a toolbar for Firefox browsers, sidesteps Hype Machine’s legal landmines (I think) by simply sending users directly to the music blogs themselves. When you select a song (or Twones picks one for you) it opens the page in a new browser window, and the song is supposed to play automatically.

So no legal liability (theoretically). No licensing fees either.

But it’s not nearly so much fun. At least in the brief spins I’ve seen. Precisely because the songs aren’t cached, going from one Twones blog to another can mean there’s a gap between songs as the page loads. Or no song at all if Twones steers you to a dead link.

It could be that all of this is simply early-stage kinks, because the service just opened to the public this morning. But I fear that playing by the rules will ultimately cost Twones here.

That will no doubt come as a shock to Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT), who all retain search data for a year or more. But it can’t be nearly as shocking as the Working Party’s recommendation that IP, or Internet Protocol, addresses be protected as personal information, a requirement that, were it to be implemented, could interfere with their ability to deliver relevant ads.

From the Working Party document:

A key conclusion of this opinion is that the Data Protection Directive generally applies to the processing of personal data by search engines, even when their headquarters are outside the EEA, and that the onus is on search engines in this position to clarify their role in the EEA and the scope of their responsibilities under the Directive.

“This Opinion concludes that personal data must only be processed for legitimate purposes. Search-engine providers must delete or irreversibly anonymize personal data once they no longer serve the specified and legitimate purpose they were collected for and be capable of justifying retention and the longevity of cookies deployed at all times. The consent of the user must be sought for all planned cross-relation of user data, user-profile enrichment exercises. Web site editor opt-outs must be respected by search engines and requests from users to update/refresh caches must be complied with immediately. The Working Party recalls the obligation of search engines to clearly inform the users upfront of all intended uses of their data and to respect their right to readily access, inspect or correct their personal data.”

Yesterday, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy filed a petition with the FTC demanding that Majoras recuse herself from voting on the Google-DoubleClick deal because her husband is a equity partner at Jones Day, the law firm representing DoubleClick in the merger. Moreover, Majoras herself was once a partner at Jones Day as well. “A reasonable person with knowledge of the relevant facts would question the chairman’s impartiality in this matter,” the two consumer advocacy groups said in the filing (PDF). “The direct and predictable financial interest is on the spouse of the chairman, whose firm does not simply represent a party before the commission but who himself is directly responsible for the firm’s business development in Washington, D.C.” (In a statement issued by the FTC today, Majoras corrects what she calls “key factual errors” in the petition and lays out her case for fulfulling “the duties entrusted to me when I was appointed and confirmed.”)

Now, the FTC claims that Jones Day is advising DoubleClick only on the European Commission’s review of the merger. “We learned only yesterday that Jones Day is representing DoubleClick before the European Commission, not the (U.S.) Federal Trade Commission,” FTC spokeswoman Claudia Bourne Farrell told News.com. “Jones Day has not appeared before the FTC on this matter.”

But a page on Jones Day’s Web site seemed to say otherwise–at least until it was deleted. But while it may have disappeared from jonesday.com, it did not disappear from Google’s cache.

Jones Day is advising DoubleClick Inc., the digital marketing technology provider, on the international and U.S. antitrust and competition law aspects of its planned $3.1 billion acquisition by Google Inc. The proposed acquisition will combine DoubleClick’s expertise in ad management technology with Google’s Internet search and content platform. The transaction is currently under review by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and European Commission.”

Now why would Jones Day pull that page (and beyond that, why would it be so ignorant of the dangers of Google’s cache)? It was “confusing,” the firm says. “The language in the posting apparently was confusing, since EPIC cites it as evidence JD is representing DC at the FTC, and we never have,” Jones Day partner Joe Sims told News.com. “So we took it down and will rewrite it to eliminate the confusion.”

The FTC is currently reviewing the matter with its ethics officer.