Tomorrow, June 26, the SaveNetRadio coalition has called for a national day of silence to protest higher royalty fees that go into effect July 15. The new fees effectively put out of business the smaller Net radio stations.  Yesterday, Adam Curry made a great point about the situation. The increased fees apply to all music by default, but other agreements can take precedence. Therefore, if someone sets up an alternative system for granting performance rights for music, broadcasters could continue so long as they only use music from the alternative system.

Well, Adam already did this a couple years ago.  It's called the PodSafe Music Network. In the spirit of the Internet, it's a route around an obstruction, in this case the RIAA. While most of the content there is indie, there are some big name acts. There are definitely some great acts there that aren't big names but should be, such as Brother Love.

One of my favorite Net radio stations is SOMA.FM's Boot Liquor station. The overwhelming majority of the content on there is no major label content. It's music I haven't heard elsewhere. It's entirely possible for those acts to make themselves podsafe. And I wouldn't be surprised if an artist like Willie Nelson could make his catalog podsafe. This is how we change things on the Internet. It's the PBS model to annoy their listeners until they get enough money.  The Internet model is to stop whining and start routing around: do it yourself. 

As a (once upon a time) stereoscopic photographer and modeler, I take note of articles about 3D interfaces that are steroscopic and not just 3D mapped to a 2D display. The New York Times article "Why Hollywood is Getting Serious about 3-D" not only updates the state of art and commerce for stereoscopic cinema, but it also speculates on the convergence of cinema with virtual worlds:

If you believe the theory that TVs and computers will merge into one utility, 3-D offers intriguing interactive possibilities — especially the use of avatars in everything from PlayStations and Xboxes to virtual worlds for grown-ups like Second Life and virtual playgrounds for children like Club Penguin.

For the uninitiated, avatars are digital representations of yourself in video games or as alter egos in the online world. At first blush, they may seem like something for geeks and under-30s, but a lot of people are trying to figure out ways of bringing avatars into the mainstream — the idea being that a virtual world like Second Life is just a three-dimensional version of the Internet.

The interesting thing to me is the insertion the meme of Second Life as 3D internet into a conversation about the current and future direction of 3D entertainment.