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The royalty fees paid by Internet radio broadcasters has always been a little eye raising considering the small audiences and predominance of lesser known artists. Things really became out of whack when the Copyright Royalty Board voted to uphold its most recent decision - a decision that would triple the current rate and be retroactive to January 1st, 2006. Some broadcasters simply turned features off overnight (like Last.fm’s neighbor streaming radio). Others, like Pandora’s founder Tim Westergren, have spoken out about the ruling. From his interview with Gizmodo:

For most (including Pandora), it’s still a money-loser at the old rates that we are working as hard as we can (15 full time sales people are on the job) to turn profitable in a year or two. The growth figures put out by JP Morgan (recently revised downward from $500M to $150M) don’t mean profitability—they mean more revenue which comes with greater costs. It’s a thin margin business at best. No one’s profiteering here.

Some extremely sobering information. Not only are investors in new streaming music startups likely to head for the hills but existing contributors have to be concerned with those statements.

If you interested in helping SaveNetRadio.org is doing the ubiquitous petition thing. But beyond wagging our fingers and shaking our heads what can be done? And if the online radio was a crap business to be in anyway is it worth saving?

There are a laudable group of environmentally conscious folks that have banded together in the virtual world of Second Life. Their purpose is to raise awareness of environmental issues. However, they’re apparently not aware of the detrimental effects that the sexual deviant’s playground produces.

As the impeccable Tony Walsh states in an open letter to the Second Life Environmental Council:

What is the environmental impact of an expanding virtual world served from thousands of high-end computers to hundreds of thousands of high-end computers around the globe? Although computers are getting more efficient as time goes by, Second Life isn’t getting any smaller: Ironically, a Brazilian version of Second Life is due to launch April 23, 2007. If Carr’s math is correct, Brazilian Second Life users will be doubling their average energy consumption.

I’ve reviewed your group’s Events Calendar for Earth Month / Earth Day, and I don’t see any events devoted to looking at the ecological impact of the platform from which you’ll be talking about ecological impact. That seems a bit like organizing a drive-a-thon for pollution reduction without examining the emissions of cars. Clearly you know cars aren’t an appropriate vehicle for pollution reduction: Is Second Life an appropriate vehicle for Earth Day events?

Oh snap! Now if you’ll excuse me I’m off to destroy a tree in real life by planting a fake one in game. Oh the irony!

All the news outlets were buzzing about how Microsoft was in the bidding to acquire DoubleClick, a banner serving company. However, before the weekend rolled around Google’s checkbook had swooped in and bought the ‘Punch the Monkey’ specialist for a whopping $3.1 billion. The steal put Microsoft in a difficult position - it’s ad network was considered sub par, it wasn’t getting traction in the marketplace, and having DoubleClick in Google’s stable provided some impressive benefits for advertisers. What is bygone behemoth to do?

Take a page from its mid-90’s competitor’s playbook and whine to the Department of Justice about monopoly violations. Because if you can’t beat ‘em, fuss about it. While Robert Scoble might have recently been named ‘King of the Shills‘ he does have a good point regarding Microsoft’s irony:

Isn’t it funny how there’s been a total turnaround at Microsoft in just six years? Instead of asking us to help poor old persecuted Microsoft out now we’re being asked to have the government look into the business of Google.

Now, you might not agree with me about either case, but I’ll be consistent at least. I was in Microsoft’s side against the government last time (they asked nicely). But I’m in Google’s side this time. Sounds a lot like Microsoft is now the company who had its ass kicked in the marketplace and is running to government regulators to get some relief.

Militant Geek doesn’t pull punches when its come to the Redmond behemoth which starts with M and ends in $. They’ve never been innovators. But with billions in the bank and thousands of Microserfs ready to take on any cause Microsoft is never a company to be counted out. Plodding and ponderous? Yes. But are they dead as Paul Gram so crassly suggested in his link-bait post this weekend? The blogsphere couldn’t wait to answer.

As the appropriately named raging mouthpiece Dave Winer was clever to point out:

Microsoft is not dead, because (come on get real) it’s a company, and companies aren’t living, and they don’t die.

The also appropriately named Don Dodge, current Microsoft employee, carefully shirks the issue:

Microsoft is a software company. Apple is a hardware company and Google does consumer web search. I have a lot of respect for Apple and Google, but Microsoft killers? I don’t think so.

Apparently he missed the Google Office announcement and its ascent on the S-Curve. And all those hated ‘Get a Mac’ Apple ads espouse the benefits of Apple’s software, not hardware - DOH!

The point is that this is the classic blogstorm in a teacup. One attention-deprived blogger purposely posts alarmist tripe and the echosphere chimes in shallow me-too-isms or counter claims.

What we really aught to be discussing is the legitimacy of this photo from the annuls of Microsoft history:

Oh, poor Second Life. First the media sees through your artificial scandal meant to ‘legitimize’ your virtual economy. Then you offer people the chance to keep their own last names - for the low, low price of $50 a year. The best Second Life news of the week, however, had to be that famed teledildonics expert Fo3 qDot Bunnyhug is leaving Second Life. For all the single-mother brothel owners and naked streakers that Second Life provides some problems can’t be overcome. For Bunnyhug, these issues are technical - not moral. He’s moving on to Open Croquet which, unlike Second Life, is open source and completely distributed.

My prediction? Open Croquet has languished in obscurity while Second Life’s inferior, closed platform got all the press. With an expert in exciting your naughty bits with naughty bytes now in the OC camp we may just see a migration. Either that, or a confirmed sexual deviant got tired of frame rate sputtering and world crashing when trying to do a furry.

Amanda Congdon, everyone’s favorite vlogger of questionable humor, got in trouble earlier this year for confusing professional unbiasedness with personal gain. After the debate you’d think that Amanda would at least allow some time for tempers to cool off. Of course, this is Congdon we’re talking about. Rather than letting a minor fracas become buried beneath the dandruff of headier pursuits she pours gasoline on the fire. We’ve suggested that Amanda suffered from some kind of vanity complex in the past. Given that the video has two versions of Amanda discussing Amanda’s affairs I think we’ve got confirmation.

And she’s not done endorsing products either. Last November a luke warm reception awaited the Beatles Love album, a collection of half hearted remixes meant to continue Sir Paul’s post-matrimony warchest. As industry veteran Bob Lefsetz’s review stated:

I think it’s sacrilegious. Leave well enough, leave SUPERIOR, alone. What’s next, recutting “On The Waterfront”? “Gone With The Wind”? Do we really need classic tracks remixed?

“Strawberry Fields Forever” has got none of the bizarre magic of the original. “Octopus’ Garden”? The shittiest track on “Abbey Road”. Couldn’t they have used “Act Naturally” if they needed a Ringo cut? Well, no, then they’d have to pay royalties to someone ELSE, since it’s a cover and the writer isn’t in the band.

I’m thinking nothing’s sacred. It’s only about dough. And didn’t George Martin go on record he retired because he couldn’t hear anymore?

Which brings us to yesterday’s ‘news’ from Amanda’s ABC show. She’s wearing a T-Shirt for the reviled album which, taken by itself, just further demonstrates her impeccable taste. However, on the exact same day another geek favorite, Cali Lewis happens to wear a Beatles shirt on her show?

Could it be that two of the most popular objects of geek affection happened to wear Beatles promotional items on the same day? With the album out months ago and the Beatles having yet to announce when they’ll be on iTunes the timing of such a subversive campaign seems odd. However, given Amanda’s past we won’t put it past her if there were favors traded at some point.

Ah Amanda, perhaps only your self-absorbed self may know the true answer.

Take a day dedicated to elaborate tech hijinks, cheap web video, and corporate CEO targets - hilarity should ensue, no? Well, leave it to the people at Sun to turn the ingredients for laugh dynamite into an insipid, embarrassing mess.

Easy bake oven for cooking? HA HA! A rack mounted wine cooler? A bit better. The Inquirer as toilet reading because it’s “on a CEO’s level”? Snicker worthy, but there simply isn’t enough of it. My advise to the pranksters - stick with your day job of slowly becoming irrelevant; you’re so much better at that.

Nobody has every accused MilitantGeek of prematurely jumping on a bandwagon - probably because we’re too crass to count and those RSS readers are bots. However, all the self-righteous kids are complaining about how useless Twitter is. So what better time for MilitantGeek to get on board! Since this site is pretty much useless combining it with Twitter is the esoteric equivalent of peanut butter and jelly!

If you Twitter just go to http://twitter.com/MilitantGeek and add the user as a friend. You’ll get all the vitriol of Militant Geek in an easy to consume 140 characters on your cell phone, IM client, or (*yawn) browser. And when Twitter collapses under its own lack of a business model we’ll be there!

Kotaku brought to our attention an incredible eBay auction of drool worthy proportions. Nearly every major console from the last 20 years (with original boxes, no less) is up for sale. Ataris, Nintendos, Segas - you name it, its there.

But why would a collection so dutifully preserved be callously flung upon the roasting spit of capitalism? Apparently the owner is getting married. Just goes to show that when it comes to life some knobs are more important than others.

Poor Digg. One minute the social news website that sprung forth in a beer tinged moment of indiscretion from Kevin Rose is being gamed. The comes word from Muhammad Saleem on the Pronet Advertising blog that the site is completely haxxored:

As a result of a mistake made by developers at Digg, not only did the site inadvertently create a flaw in their newly added friend referral feature, but they made its user-base vulnerable to a potential privacy disaster.

The referral feature works through a URL-based friend adding mechanism, which means that if you’re logged into your Digg profile and you visit a link of the form http://digg.com/invitefrom/username, ‘username’ is automatically added as a friend of yours.

Oh my! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats, living together… mass hysteria! Now even the most unpopular Diggers can be buried under all the friends of their choosing. Now if they just had something other than juvenile barbs to share with each other.