Ars Technica reports: The news that President Obama has formally nominated Julius Genachowski to chair the Federal Communications Commission has been received with something slightly short of euphoria by a large portion of the broadcasting/telecommunications sector. Over the last eight hours Ars Technica has been deluged with statements of pure, unadulterated happiness about the pick (which everybody has known about for months). And they’re coming from all policy directions, too.

“Julius is an outstanding choice for FCC Chairman,” Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge says. “Julius Genachowski is an excellent choice to chair the FCC,” Comcast’s Chairman and CEO Brian L. Roberts told us. “Julius Genachowski is an excellent choice to lead the FCC,” declared Free Press’s Josh Silver shortly after the announcement.

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Concerns about DMCA [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] takedown abuse and fair use aren’t limited to Lawrence Lessig, the EFF, and Free Press—John McCain and Sarah Palin are going all mavericky on the issue as well. Yesterday, their campaign sent a letter to YouTube complaining about rights holders (especially news organizations) that filed illegitimate DMCA takedown notices and managed to have important campaign clips pulled at crucial times. The letter is yet more evidence of why human judgment—not just automated filtering or scanning—is crucial in such cases.

The letter opens by talking about how important YouTube has been for the campaign’s efforts to get out copies of commercials, speeches, etc., but notes that the site’s usefulness is being curtailed by “overreaching copyright claims.” Many of these claims have involved “fewer than 10 seconds of footage from news broadcasts in campaign ads or videos, as a basis for commentary on the issues presented in the news reports.”

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The Free Press issued a report this afternoon casting doubt on the theory of network congestion that has been cited by ISPs as the reason behind P2P blocking or broadband caps, and offering more rational solutions for dealing with sporadic congestion. It also claims that tiered broadband and limitation pricing–in which a carrier charges per gigabyte fee after users exceed a certain cap–is unlikely to become reality. Prior to the report coming out, I had spent the afternoon asking people about this issue, trying to figure out if our series of tubes is really clogged or if the carriers are merely seeking financial and/or competitive gain.

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