New York - Teenage hacker George Hotz, 19, claims to have created an application that can “jailbreak” the iPhone 3G S, thus install third-party software, even if that software is not approved by Apple.

New York - For the past year, Jim Griffin has advised Warner Music Group on digital distribution and licensing models with the goal of bringing an end to the litigation that has put a wedge between the major labels and their customers and replacing it with a regular flow of income for right holders. The project known as Choruss, which is being incubated at Warner and is planned to be rolled out as a non-profit with Griffin at the helm, proposes to build a small music-royalty fee into university tuition payments received from students, and, if successful, could be expanded to make ISPs the collector of the fees. For those of you who were not able to attend DMW's Digital Music Forum East this past week, here is a complete transcript of his interesting keynote presentation:

New York - Fascinating keynote at the Digital Music Forum East this morning from Jim Griffin, an advisor to Warner Music Group and head of the Choruss initiative. I'm getting a text of his speech and will post. But suffice to say he delivered a smackdown to Rick Carnes and Chris Castle over their criticisms of Choruss which ran in op-ed that appeared in Content Agenda and other publications.

As we wrote on Friday, the Senate has passed the Bill that would extend from February 17 to June 12 the deadline for full-power television stations to transition to digital operations.  This leaves the House of Representatives to once again consider the matter - supposedly in committee on Tuesday and perhaps by vote of the full House as early as Wednesday.  In preparation for that consideration, there have been conflicting letters released by Congressmen supporting the bill and those who are oppose.

Washington D. C. - The U.S. Senate unanimously passed a bill on Thursday to delay the national transition to digital television to June 12 from February 17. The main concerns behind the decision are that an estimated 20 million mostly poor, elderly and rural households are not technically ready for the congressionally mandated switch.

The press was abuzz yesterday with the news that Julius Genachowski is apparently the pick of the Obama Administration for the position of FCC Chairman.  Mr. Genachowski was at the FCC during the Reed Hundt Administration, and has since worked in the private sector in the telecommunications industry, including work with Barry Diller and running a DC-based venture capital fund.  From the positive reactions that the appointment has received from all quarters, the choice would seem to be a great one.  But, in looking at some of the reactions, you have to question whether everyone has to be reading what they want to see into the new Commission. 

As the Obama administration fills its top level government posts, all eyes are now turning to the next levels of government appointments which, at some point, will include a new Chair of the FCC and potentially other new FCC Commissioners. We wrote about our hopes for an Obama administration at the FCC immediately after the election, and now other voices in Washington are weighing in. And, as one might expect, with so many different perspectives, the advice is far from consistent. As we wrote in our analysis, the appointment of the FCC Chair is crucial as it is the FCC Chair, far more than the President or the White House, who sets the tone for Communications policy.

There's a new top-level domain name ("TLD") on the block, and broadcasters and other media companies will want to protect URLs that include their call signs, unique slogans and positioning statements or other registered marks or names.  The new TLD will be ".tel."  Unlike .com, .net, .org, and other current TLDs that link to websites, the new .tel TLD is designed specifically for access by mobile devices such as the Blackberry and iPhone and will access to the contact information of the holder of the .tel URL without the need for a standard website.  The theory behind the .tel TLD is to allow instant access to contact information without having to access a registrant's website.  When contact information is accessed via mobile devices, the telephone numbers will appear as "hot links" that will dial those numbers upon touch or selection. 

This morning I was reading an excellent piece on Ars Technica asking the question Did "Lazy Sunday" make YouTube's $1.5 billion sale possible?. I looked back at our data and blog posts over the past few years to see whether we can help answer the question. To remind readers, "Lazy Sunday" refers to a Saturday Night Live "rap about a pair of lame white guys from the Village who wanted nothing more than to spend a Sunday afternoon in the theater, watching The Chronicles of Narnia". NBC Universal's general counsel, Rick Cotton, said (at DMW's Future of Television Forum East last week) that he believes that the SNL skit vaulted YouTube to popularity. We blogged about this skit the week after it aired in December 2005, showing that in one week, the skit propelled YouTube ahead of Google Video with much of that traffic coming from MySpace. Visits continued to climb from there.

Any lingering doubts as to where the incoming Obama administration will be coming from on telecom policy were more or less erased Friday when the president elect named Susan Crawford and Kevin Werbach to lead the transition team at the Federal Communications Commission. Both Crawford and Werbach are industry experts and proponents of "broadband everywhere." Crawford, a professor of law at the University of Michigan and author of a widely read blog on communications issues, in particular has been critical of the telecom industry and has endorsed treating broadband connectivity like a regulated or municipally provided utility, similar to water, sewage and electricity service. Werbach is a professor of legal studies at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business and organizer of the annual Supernova technology conference. During the Clinton administration, he served as counsel for new technology policy at the FCC.

In an appearance on CNBC Friday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt took himself out of the running to be the Obama Administration’s promised chief technology officer, so we can stick in fork in that really bad idea. Asked by host Jim Cramer if he’s interested in the job Schmidt said, “I love working at Google and I'm very happy to stay at Google, so the answer is no.” Thank goodness for that.

With Barack Obama's historic victory just sinking in, all over Washington (and no doubt elsewhere in the country), the speculation begins as to what the new administration will mean to various sectors of the economy (though, in truth, that speculation has been going on for months). What will his administration mean for broadcasters? Will the Obama administration mean more regulation? Will the fairness doctrine make a return?