Two academics—Susan Crawford and Kevin Werbach—will lead the Obama FCC transition team with the responsibility of advising the incoming administration on policy, budget and personnel matters, the Obama-Biden office announced today.
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Crawford is a professor of law at the University of Michigan, teaching communications law and Internet law. She was a partner with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (now WilmerHale) until the end of 2002, when she left to become a legal academic. Crawford recently ended her term as a member of the board of directors of ICANN.

Werbach is an assistant professor of legal studies and business ethics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and the organizer of the annual Supernova technology conference. His research explores the legal and business dynamics of information and communications technologies. During the Clinton administration, he served as counsel for new technology policy at the FCC.

Good news, coupled with the decision on white spaces.

Related: Larry Page and FCC Chairman Kevin Martin discuss the white spaces vote.

• The EFF: The Two Best Books About the DMCA
• The EFF: DMCA: Ten Years of Unintended Consequences
• Circumventing Competition: The Perverse Consequences of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
• DMCA Week @ Freedom to Tinker
• DMCA Week: A second orphan works problem?

Dan Rayburn of StreamingMedia.com on Netflix’s HD+Xbox360 streaming rollout: He confirms the Roku set-top is “HD-capable” as well as providing some hands-on with the Xbox360 (HD) streaming.

In addition, while some have speculated that the current Roku box can’t do HD streaming, and is the reason why Netflix does not offer HD video quality, this is not the case. Roku confirmed for me this morning that the current version of their Roku box is currently capable of streaming HD quality video. The lack of an HD offering by Netflix via the Roku box is not due to any technical limitation of the Roku hardware. While Netflix won’t say what their time line is for adding HD quality video via Roku and their watch now service, they did comment to say that their HD rollout would be modest to sta

Also related:

• Variety on Netflix+VOD and the Tivo deal.
• The NYT: The Economics of the Netflix/Tivo deal.

Q&A from last month at the NYFF:

The Portable Film Festival is a daily online film channel. We profile one great new release each day, every day of the year, plus hunt, tag and collect random great web-based films spotted by Portable Film Festival curators. This is the Portable Film Festival’s serious commitment to international screen culture and to broadcasting and distribution models outside of traditional old media channels. Through our site, quality international releases will find audiences online, every day, all year round

• AppleTV USB patchstick creator.
• AppleTV Linux bootloader.
• Install XMBC Media Center on AppleTV.
• Install Boxee on AppleTV and watch Hulu.

Marshall McLuhan, re:Presidential debates, 1976.

Frieze Magazine reviews a Mary Ellen Bute retrospective (is that the correct term?) @ Sketch in London. Let’s hope this stuff makes it to DVD. Is she the Godmother of music videos?

Dada—1936

Synchromy No. 4: Escape—1938

Disc7 of Anthology Film Archives Unseen Cinema has 4 pieces from Bute:

• Dada (1936)—Mary Ellen Bute & Ted Nemeth
• Escape (1938)—Mary Ellen Bute & Ted Nemeth
• Tarantella (1940)—Mary Ellen Bute, Ted Nemeth & Norman McLaren
• Spook Sport (1940)—Mary Ellen Bute, Ted Nemeth & Norman McLaren

Artforum has a video site…been listening to Cardew’s Treatise. David Lynch’s Angriest Dog in The World comics.

Pointless but awesome: You Fell Asleep Watching a DVD

Monday’s edition of the Cato Institute’s daily podcast features an interview with Robert Laughlin, a Nobel Laureate in physics who wrote a book called The Crime of Reason about the ways that national security, patent, and copyright laws are restricting scientific research and the pursuit of knowledge.

Download audio file (getfile.php?file=robertblaughlin_intellectualpropertyversusreason_20081020.mp3)

The provocative premise of this short book is that even as we appear to be awash in information, governments and industry are restricting access to knowledge by broadening the concept of intellectual property to include things as diverse as gene sequences and sales techniques . According to Laughlin, the right to learn is now aggressively opposed by intellectual property advocates, who want ideas elevated to the status of land, cars, and other physical assets so the their unauthorized acquisition can be prosecuted as theft. With examples drawn from nuclear physics, biotechnology and patent law, Laughlin, a Nobel laureate in physics, paints a troubling picture of a society in which the only information that is truly valuable in dollars and cents is controlled by a small number of individuals.

Programs available now:

WIRED SCIENCE
CARRIER
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN FRONTIERS
NOVA
Ken Burns’ Jazz
Ken Burns’ America
Ken Burns’ American Lives

And, for all of you Mac users (of which I am one) we’ve been busy working getting a solution that will allow you to watch instantly on your Mac. So hang in there - we’ll have something for you by the end of the year.

Netflix announced deals with CBS and Disney last week.

It’s only a matter of time before this is used for Evil. Maybe I should get working on the business plan.

Related:

• iTunes’ New Genius Engine: A Threat To Filters?
• iTunes Crashes Music Recommendation Party; Rivals Rejoice
• How to confuse iTunes Genius

Ben Waggoner has more.

So, why MPEG-4 support in Silverlight? It’s pretty straightforward, really. We have customers with libraries of H.264 content they wanted to publish to Silverlight, but didn’t want to reencode to VC-1. Silverlight’s strengths go far beyond media playback, and customers wanted the choice to deploy a wide variety of existing content within Silverlight. Silverlight aspires to provide as much choice as feasible as to how Silverlight can be authored and delivered. H.264 support is something we’d considered for past versions, but there were higher priority features we needed to deliver first. Silverlight 2 provides us a very rich base for delivering web apps, so we can start spreading our wings a bit.

(rumor) iTunes will be adding HD TV show downloads with it’s forthcoming update, next week.

Amazon is expanding it’s video distribution. Via NewTeeVee:

Amazon has extended its paid video service to streaming, Macs, and compatible Sony BRAVIA devices and televisions. It previously only made movies and TV shows available for download to PCs or on TiVos. The moves were all expected and forecast, but they are no less important for Amazon to have a viable online entertainment portal.

2008 Digital Media and Learning Competition
From the release:

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, in collaboration with the University of California, Irvine, Duke University and the virtual network HASTAC, announced today a second annual open-call competition that will provide $2 million in awards to innovators shaping the field of digital media and learning. The Digital Media and Learning Competition, supported through a grant to the University of California, Irvine and administered by HASTAC, has been expanded to pilot international submissions and introduce a new category focusing on young innovators aged 18-25.

“Digital media are helping to make the world smaller, spread ideas, and encourage collaboration across borders and among people who otherwise might not have an opportunity to work together,” said MacArthur President Jonathan Fanton. “To ensure support for the freshest thinking and most innovative applications of digital media to learning, we have expanded this year’s competition to include international submissions and ideas from young people, who are often the pioneers of the digital space.”

Awards will be given in two categories:

• Innovation in Participatory Learning Awards will support projects that demonstrate new modes of participatory learning, in which people take part in virtual communities, share ideas, comment on one another’s projects, and advance goals together. Successful projects will promote participatory learning in a variety of environments: through the creation of new digital tools, modification of existing ones, or use of digital media in some other novel way. Submissions will be accepted from applicants in Canada, People’s Republic of China, India, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States, countries in which HASTAC or MacArthur have significant experience. Winners will receive between $30,000 and $250,000.
• Young Innovator Awards are designed to encourage young people aged 18-25 to think boldly about “what comes next” in participatory learning and to contribute to making it happen. Winners will receive funding to do an internship with a sponsor organization to help bring their most visionary ideas from the “garage” stage to implementation. For this competition cycle, submissions will only be accepted from applicants in the United States. Winners will receive between $5,000 and $30,000.