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The CC explicitly doesn't make any representations about rights you don't own. If you read the source you'll see:

Unless otherwise mutally agreed to by the parties in writing, licensor offers the work as-is and only to the extent of any rights held in the licensed work by the licensor. The licensor makes no representations or warranties of any kind concerning the work...

This is actually explained in the FAQ

The CC explicitly doesn't make any representations about rights you don't own. If you read the source you'll see:

Unless otherwise mutally agreed to by the parties in writing, licensor offers the work as-is and only to the extent of any rights held in the licensed work by the licensor. The licensor makes no representations or warranties of any kind concerning the work...

This is actually explained in the FAQ

"I don't think the license makes this claim and I've seen very little legal writing to support the conclusion."

Well, here you go;

http://wiki.creativecommons.org/DiscussionDraftNonCommercial_Guidelines

Not that I disagree with your reasoning mind you. Go check the cc-licenses mailing list for many discussion re NC and how much fun it is.

NC is not something I would want to touch.

all the best,

drew

Here's the rub, much of the original content was issues under CC NC-SA but the site is now licensed GFDL 1.2, which specifically allows commercial usage, but the content is specifically disallowing commercial usage. Changing the license was really bad form, but assuming that any new content added by a contributer under the GFDL would change their previous CC NC-SA licensed property was naive and using the content commercially probably illegal.
  The definiton of commercial is pretty vague at times, probably to keep lawyers in bussiness, but now site seems to be driven primarily by a profit motive, unlike the orgininal where the revenues were intended to offset expenses, so the first site was in a gray area, but the second is probably over the line. The poster should talk to a lawyer, maybe the EFF or legal aid would be interested.

"Happy Happy Birthday,
I really hate this song!
But if I do not sing it,
I won't work here for long... Hey!"

Copyright (C) 2007 quantum bit Productions
Redistribution permitted under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.

Well, Creative Commons does have licenses for works that are to be sampled only. Commercial sampling is allowed, and verbatim redistribution is only allowed non-commercially. I'm not sure it's as general as you suggest, but legally the sampling is creating a derivative work. A problem with your suggestion is that it's very easy to create a derivative work: chop five seconds off the end, or rap "I rock" over the top of the chorus. Once people trivially change your file to creative a derivative work, they've defeated the point of your license. How would you get around that? Demand that all changes must be significant?

That is not the point, the authors published under the CC-NC license, Oxford has no right to distribute the work commercially. By distributing a work that they has no right to distribute Oxford has stolen the work and not only should any of the ill-gotten gains made by Oxford be transfered to the Authors, they maybe entitled to other damages. Oxford maybe liable for criminal or civil damages; it's not a matter of being able to get the article for free, it's a matter that making anyone is illegal; of course IANAL, but if were one of the Authors I'd be calling one.

If all you're interested in is all credit pointing back to you, just go to your local copyright office, register the copyright on it, and offer it under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which allows anyone to use, share or create derivative works of. Alternatively, if you don't want anyone messing with it, use the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License.

This way, people are free to use it under the terms those licenses provide for, but since you hold the registered copyright, if anyone tries to use it for anything the licenses don't allow, you can take them to court. Thanks to the copyright registration, the burden of proof is shifted to them to prove that you *don't* own it, not an easy task compared to you having to prove you do own it.

If the idea is more of an invention, than you'd be better off patenting it, which is much more expensive ($500 for patent, $40 for copyright), but the same idea applies: Register protection on it, then license it so that anyone can use it under your terms.

If all you're interested in is all credit pointing back to you, just go to your local copyright office, register the copyright on it, and offer it under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which allows anyone to use, share or create derivative works of. Alternatively, if you don't want anyone messing with it, use the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License.

This way, people are free to use it under the terms those licenses provide for, but since you hold the registered copyright, if anyone tries to use it for anything the licenses don't allow, you can take them to court. Thanks to the copyright registration, the burden of proof is shifted to them to prove that you *don't* own it, not an easy task compared to you having to prove you do own it.

If the idea is more of an invention, than you'd be better off patenting it, which is much more expensive ($500 for patent, $40 for copyright), but the same idea applies: Register protection on it, then license it so that anyone can use it under your terms.

It's Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0". At the time the torrent was posted (the morning after Danish TV aired it) we weren't sure we could do this. It'll be in the next release. Danish TV only bought the right to air it.

Look for music with the Creative Commons seal of approval. There are Creative Commons search engines, in which you can specify whether you want music you can use commercially, or whether you can create derivative works.

There is also the Common Content Catalog, which has a Music Section.

If you like piano, there is my humble offerring, in a variety of audio formats as well as sheet music. I chose to place my music under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 2.5 license, not just to "eat my own dog food", but because I feel that doing so helps me to advance my music aspirations:

I am weary of my twenty-year career as a software engineer. I need a change. That's why I'm taking piano lessons with the aim of passing the music school entrance audition someday. I'm going to major in musical composition; I want to learn to compose symphonies.

And the lot of my compositions are going to be CC-SA licensed.

I have already found that doing this encourages more people to get to know my music. Now, I know I'm not a pop artist - in fact most people don't like my music, but many do. By giving away my music I'm building a base of fans who will buy tickets to my live concerts some day.

This last weekend I spent four hours in downtown Santa Cruz, California, walking up and down Pacific Avenue passing out handbills that advertise my downloads. On the back is the Creative Commons logo and an encouragement for the recipient to share my music over the Internet and to burn CDs for their friends. I think I gave out over a hundred handbills, and left stacks of them on the counters in two record stores and a musical instrument store.

It's funny, the reactions I get from some people. Many believe that this is too good to be true, that there is some kind of catch, or that I'm trying to sell them something, or indoctrinate them into some kind of cult.

Well, sort of: the Cult of Copyleft.

I made a couple of new friends as I did this, one of them a "Downtown Host" and the other a street musician who plays the guitar.

I also burn CDs of my music to give away. I have a CD label printer that's just a regular inkjet printer with a feed mechanism for CDs. In this way I can make CDs a few at a time, and inexpensively, yet that look professional.

I try to always carry some in my backpack to give to new friends. I also give them to any street musicians that I come across, as a way of introducing myself to the local music community.

I'll give you a CD too - autographed even - if you live in the San Francisco Bay Area or in Santa Cruz County. Just email me at michael@geometricvisions.com and meet me somewhere for coffee or a beer, and I'll bring your CD with me.

Look for music with the Creative Commons seal of approval. There are Creative Commons search engines, in which you can specify whether you want music you can use commercially, or whether you can create derivative works.

There is also the Common Content Catalog, which has a Music Section.

If you like piano, there is my humble offerring, in a variety of audio formats as well as sheet music. I chose to place my music under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 2.5 license, not just to "eat my own dog food", but because I feel that doing so helps me to advance my music aspirations:

I am weary of my twenty-year career as a software engineer. I need a change. That's why I'm taking piano lessons with the aim of passing the music school entrance audition someday. I'm going to major in musical composition; I want to learn to compose symphonies.

And the lot of my compositions are going to be CC-SA licensed.

I have already found that doing this encourages more people to get to know my music. Now, I know I'm not a pop artist - in fact most people don't like my music, but many do. By giving away my music I'm building a base of fans who will buy tickets to my live concerts some day.

This last weekend I spent four hours in downtown Santa Cruz, California, walking up and down Pacific Avenue passing out handbills that advertise my downloads. On the back is the Creative Commons logo and an encouragement for the recipient to share my music over the Internet and to burn CDs for their friends. I think I gave out over a hundred handbills, and left stacks of them on the counters in two record stores and a musical instrument store.

It's funny, the reactions I get from some people. Many believe that this is too good to be true, that there is some kind of catch, or that I'm trying to sell them something, or indoctrinate them into some kind of cult.

Well, sort of: the Cult of Copyleft.

I made a couple of new friends as I did this, one of them a "Downtown Host" and the other a street musician who plays the guitar.

I also burn CDs of my music to give away. I have a CD label printer that's just a regular inkjet printer with a feed mechanism for CDs. In this way I can make CDs a few at a time, and inexpensively, yet that look professional.

I try to always carry some in my backpack to give to new friends. I also give them to any street musicians that I come across, as a way of introducing myself to the local music community.

I'll give you a CD too - autographed even - if you live in the San Francisco Bay Area or in Santa Cruz County. Just email me at michael@geometricvisions.com and meet me somewhere for coffee or a beer, and I'll bring your CD with me.

Look for music with the Creative Commons seal of approval. There are Creative Commons search engines, in which you can specify whether you want music you can use commercially, or whether you can create derivative works.

There is also the Common Content Catalog, which has a Music Section.

If you like piano, there is my humble offerring, in a variety of audio formats as well as sheet music. I chose to place my music under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 2.5 license, not just to "eat my own dog food", but because I feel that doing so helps me to advance my music aspirations:

I am weary of my twenty-year career as a software engineer. I need a change. That's why I'm taking piano lessons with the aim of passing the music school entrance audition someday. I'm going to major in musical composition; I want to learn to compose symphonies.

And the lot of my compositions are going to be CC-SA licensed.

I have already found that doing this encourages more people to get to know my music. Now, I know I'm not a pop artist - in fact most people don't like my music, but many do. By giving away my music I'm building a base of fans who will buy tickets to my live concerts some day.

This last weekend I spent four hours in downtown Santa Cruz, California, walking up and down Pacific Avenue passing out handbills that advertise my downloads. On the back is the Creative Commons logo and an encouragement for the recipient to share my music over the Internet and to burn CDs for their friends. I think I gave out over a hundred handbills, and left stacks of them on the counters in two record stores and a musical instrument store.

It's funny, the reactions I get from some people. Many believe that this is too good to be true, that there is some kind of catch, or that I'm trying to sell them something, or indoctrinate them into some kind of cult.

Well, sort of: the Cult of Copyleft.

I made a couple of new friends as I did this, one of them a "Downtown Host" and the other a street musician who plays the guitar.

I also burn CDs of my music to give away. I have a CD label printer that's just a regular inkjet printer with a feed mechanism for CDs. In this way I can make CDs a few at a time, and inexpensively, yet that look professional.

I try to always carry some in my backpack to give to new friends. I also give them to any street musicians that I come across, as a way of introducing myself to the local music community.

I'll give you a CD too - autographed even - if you live in the San Francisco Bay Area or in Santa Cruz County. Just email me at michael@geometricvisions.com and meet me somewhere for coffee or a beer, and I'll bring your CD with me.

Artists usually have a huge archive of unused material, either done in their free time for practice and fun or for games that never used it due to a redesign or cancelation. Even some of the dummy objects most artists produce, to give the coders something to work with, can be better than actual graphics made by a hobbyist.
I always wondered why they just wouldn't contribute at least some early works to the open source community? Is it maybe just the lack of a good website where stuff like this could be indexed or isn't there a good enough standard license model to release something like that for free? I thought the Creatice Commons license would be quite suitabel for it.

Everybody who spent some time finding a good textured and rigged low-poly character model, preferably with basic animations, on the net for use in an open source game, knows that there is next to nothing available. Well, at least not when I could have needed one about two years ago.
It really doesn't have to be that professional or finished - even that untextured rat someone made a decade ago to have something to shoot at, later to replaced by some creatures, could maybe be of use to someone; and if he textures it, and maybe do a simple animation and perhaps record some sounds, and then uses it in his project, he should give the additional stuff he made to other developers as well.
Soon there will be a nice looking 3D rat with some textures to choose from, various sounds, walking and death animations, etc. and everybody did his part. That's the open source way - why does it seem it's not very common among artits and only coders?

Anyway, I think it could be really just the right website that is missing - some Sourceforge-style page with a nice upload-frontend, where stuff gets properly indexed based on categories, tags and styles and with a feedback option, where contributers can see which projects are using their works. Add some voting to rank it, karma, apply a fair license to it upon upload and I think something like this could really take off.

It's even more complicated than that. Most of the Creative Commons licenses explicitly forbid adding DRM to the files. (See FAQ here.) So, adding DRM to CC files would be a license violation.

It's unclear who is actually doing the violating, though. If I transfer a file to you, and our devices conspire to add DRM to the file, who is at fault? Is it me? Is it you? (We should have known how the devices operate, and it is our responsibility from ever using them in conjunction with CC files?) Or is the device manufacturer liable? Normally I would say that the device manufacturer cannot be held accountable for copyright violations on the part of the users... however in this case if the user has no way to turn off the 'feature' then the device is not letting them comply with copyright. In effect, the device is enforcing copyright violations, by not allowing users to respect CC licenses, even if they wanted to.

Okay, the logic is a little contorted, but I think you get the point. Devices that mandatorily add DRM are incompatible with a great many legitimate uses, and in conflict with many distribution licenses.

It is feasible to already implement 14-year copyright today, by private contract. E.g. this could be implemented in a GPL-style license.

""Public domain" only really applies to works with expired copyright, or works created by public institutions like the U.S. Government."

Not always. Plus a copyright holder can release their works into the public domain. Further detail here.

Unsigned band who sees their first major-label contract as their shot at the big time and all their dreams come true: "Where do we sign? We brought our peeeens!"

This is only true if the band doesn't know much. The only thing, other than sucking the blood of entertainers, major labels are "good" for is marketing. However the internet makes it easier for new musicans to breakout. Digital recording is easy and doesn't take much hardware, relatively to analogue at least, and a band can use the computers in the public library or net cafe to create their own pages and profiles on MySpace or upload music to Magnatunes or any other of a number of cheap or Creative Commons websites. While more effort may be needed for a band to get their music out, than having a major label do it, it's easier than it ever has been for musicans to break out. And instead of the label keeping most of the money, the band gets to keep most of it this way.

Mr Radu-Cristian Fotescu appears to have licensed his work under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license which would allow the radio station to copy his work.

However, it does not allow for commercial exploitation of his work so we enter a grey-area. Is the use of his work to prosecute a lawsuit for monetary damages a commercial exploitation of his work?

Good questions...

Ownership vs. credit, were part of the focus of the article. Authors, I believe, care more about credit than ownership. I personally care mainly about credit. Ownership is a byproduct of the economy, but read on to see if my personal situation can shine some light on your curiosity...

===

Last summer I drove across country with a video camera and produced the trip into a series of chapters that were authored into a DVD that I gave to friends and family. I also posted this to Google Video and explicitly slapped a by-sa/2.5 Creative Commons into each of the credit reels. The production is better than typical family movies, though by no means professional. I did make it a point to add music to the soundtrack that was covered by similar licenses.

Do I expect anybody to care that my work was released the way it was? No. Do I expect to draw any financial benefit from the work I did? Also, no. It was a labor of love. And I still watch the movies from time to time, because they are awesome (for me). And twenty years from now, I'll still watch them. Additionally, I'm glad to have given 2,500 people the opportunity to see a full video depicting the eruption of Old Faithful (by far, my most popular movie... though in my opinion, not the best).

On the other hand, I also write. I've written a good 80% of a novel, and I admit that I am truly conflicted about selling it. I *want* to quit my day job so I can concentrate of writing fulltime. On the other hand, I don't want to turn over my rights to a publishing company (which is what one does, when they get published). I truly want my work to be available, though in order to mobilize myself to a position to lose the day job, giving it away isn't feasible.

That is why I favor free (as in speech) software, but also free (as in beer) tangible goods.

Yes, it's a technicality but I find it an important one. I hold several copyrights as an author and programmer, and I enjoy some benefits from them. I also support copyright reform (especially Founders' Copyright).

However, I do not support the RIAA or the MPAA, as I find their tactics indefensible. I also believe that it's completely inappropriate; copyright holders themselves should pursue violations, rather than pushing such dirty work to a second-party group.

I don't believe you can usefully generalize my opinions on copyright from my disagreement with groups such as the RIAA and the MPAA.

There is literally no specific freedom that all Creative Commons licenses grant. Therefore, to say that a work "uses a Creative Commons license" is to leave all important questions about the work's licensing unanswered. When you see such a statement, please suggest making it clearer. And if someone proposes to "use a Creative Commons license" for a certain work, it is vital to ask immediately "Which one?"

For example, the nc (no commercial use) and nd (aka NoDerivs, meaning no derivative works) Creative Commons "options" clearly make any license nonfree. Please don't use them.

There is literally no specific freedom that all Creative Commons licenses grant. Therefore, to say that a work "uses a Creative Commons license" is to leave all important questions about the work's licensing unanswered. When you see such a statement, please suggest making it clearer. And if someone proposes to "use a Creative Commons license" for a certain work, it is vital to ask immediately "Which one?"

For example, the nc (no commercial use) and nd (aka NoDerivs, meaning no derivative works) Creative Commons "options" clearly make any license nonfree. Please don't use them.

Unfortunately, none of the referenced articles/links specifies which of the various Creative Commons licenses will be used to release the debates. Having just released a photo project under a CC license, it appears that there are at least four basickinds of CC licenses, and some varients on them:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

The no-derivitives license in particular could have a big impact, especially for people looking to throw up stuff on YouTube and whatnot.

It's more than usually the case.. if something is in the public domain, you don't need a license.

The fees for licensing might not exist, depending on what one plays. As I understand it, there is a lot of music to be played under licenses that allow sharing and cost no money. I hate to keep bringing up the same example repeatedly, but Magnatune.com lets you download anything from their catalog under a Creative Commons license that allows non-commercial rebroadcast in any medium (in a brief peek I saw some classical music licensed under the BY-NC-SA v1.0, US English version). I don't work for Magnatune nor do I benefit from mentioning them at all; they are doing what I think others could do as well and I believe their catalog will greatly benefit anyone looking to put together an Internet radio station of their own. Getting tracks from them is negotiating a deal with someone sufficiently empowered to license it to you.

To distribute the data, perhaps there's some sort of cooperative model which would let the listeners take on some of the load of rebroadcasting. Ideally, one would visit a website and without any setup or programming skill they could simultaneously listen to the station and share it with others. Would this would cut down on the transmission costs to the point where a consumer-grade "broadband" Internet connection work? This line might be inexpensive enough that many people already have they Internet connection they need to do the job. Some hosters could help drive down the cost of the station further still—Dreamhost.com has very inexpensive hosting packages with high bandwidth quotas and lots of storage. Depending on how one defines an Internet radio station, a playlist with a bunch of track files could qualify. Maybe you could run a program that concatenates tracks together creating a seamless audio stream.

One of the terms I've been throwing around in a fast and loose way is "Internet radio station". Jamendo.org, kahvi.org, and Magnatune.com are labels which each stream all of their catalog on-demand and gratis (with varying levels of quality and in various formats—Jamendo and kahvi can use high quality Ogg Vorbis files and Magnatune lets one download 128kbps MP3s with an automated announcer on the end of each track). Are they radio stations? Magnatune calls their playlists radio stations and I can't see why they aren't.

Creative Commons has a Founders' Copyright project, which releases items into the public domain after fourteen (or twenty-eight) years. It's a number with some good historical backing.

The appropriate licence would be attribution-noderivs.

There's no such thing as "cretive commons license". It's a whole range of different licenses. Which license are we talking about?

Right, they're only limiting your use of their recordings of the debates, but I'm willing to bet that MSNBC camera crews are the only ones allowed at these debates. So how is that not the same thing? Other than legally, of course. Slimy lawyers.

I have to agree with the other posters. Their commentary, analysis, and anything else they really produced should be protected by their copyrights, but video of what the politicians say/do should be either public domain or under one of the Creative Commons Licenses. Either that, or they should not be allowed to restrict anybody with a camera from showing up. This really should be a part of the campaign laws.

Unfortunately, Creative Commons is not meant for software.

One thing I like about Creative Commons is that their license page basically lets you mix and match license clauses to your own specification. Kinda nice to have a quick pre-build license reserving precisely those rights you desire.

Information wants to be free and stuff

And in the case of music, the vast majority of people are "landless". Or can you show me a way to tell whether my claim to "land" doesn't infringe someone else's claim to "land", given music cryptomnesia cases such as Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music and given the current patent minefield situation?

First, I don't know about Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music so I won't remark on it. Secondly just because the RIAA "controls" most of the music sold does not mean no one else can't produce music too. Otherwise Creative Commons, internet archives.org, Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads and others websites would never exist allowing legal music downloads, at least not in their current form. Also it does not prevent others from making their own music. I might even create music myself, I have a flute by David Nighteagle I'd like to learn to play, unfortunately I haven't found someone who could teach me and I no longer learn well on my own.

In fact the whole Corbis thing has the real stink of a copyright trap. With so many hundreds of thousands of images out there on the net and the growth of the creative commons, those photo companies are a dead end and are obviously becoming desperate for revenue.

The only real legal defence would be that Corbis intent is setting up the web site and freely making their content available for download is to create a trap, to trick people into using their media and then charging outrageous amounts for it. Although it is fairly clear on the site that they intend to charge licence fees for each of their photos, although perhaps it might not be so clear that they intend to charge tens of thousands of dollars for a generic photo. Well at least that fellows clients are free and clear, but the web designer is screwed and likely to get a bill from both the photo trap site and his clients.

For content go here http://creativecommons.org/ don't even think of going else where.

Should I just give up on music?

When I saw that picture my first thought was, "We have a new Creative Commons logo!"

Then of course I realized Creative Commons doesn't nest the Cs in their logo.

I am glad to see the have included public domain as a prominent choice.

I like the public domain choice too, but I find their version way too wordy. Forget the lawyer-ese, I want a license that I can glance and nod my head to. I like this version (originating from Wikipedia?).

I'm not certain what meaning the GPL has in the media content field. It provides for protection of a "Program" and it's fairly clear from the text of the license that it's talking about a computer program. The GPL does not require that the Program be given away for free (as in beer) -- it does impose certain requirements on the distributor / copier, but those say nothing about price. For reference, here's the gpl v2.

Creative Commons provides a series of form clauses which may or may not allow the free (as in beer) distribution of a work. It is certainly appropriate for media content (as opposed to software), but does not require that the author give up his or her or its rights, whether those rights be to distribution, derivative works, etc. You might want to look at their license list

. Both of these licenses rely on an effective and enforceable copyright law. I suppose if all current and future copyrighted works fell into the public domain, there may be no need for the licenses, though I would argue that the GPL has a larger intent than simply putting works into the public domain. In any case, Fox is enforcing its rights under the same copyright law that the Creative Commons licenses and the GPL rely upon.

Therefore, there is no hypocrisy because we would defend FOX if they used a freer license.

What exactly are you looking for? Free Simpsons episodes on Youtube? This wasn't the case of a creative remix or mashup. This wasn't about using clips from the Simpsons in an otherwise creative work. This was the wholesale copy and distribution of Simpsons episodes.

anyway, here's her picture... ;)

Artists will largely accept this turn of events, because in their view, they've already spent more than enough years starving.

Actually more and more artists, muscians in this case, are turning to the Creative Commons and are uploading their music to services like this one as well as Internet Archives, GoingWare, and Magnatunes amoung others.

Some types of media support metadata, and Creative Commons has the means for putting license metadata in such media. See the Creative Commons Tools and Developer Wiki pages for details.

That doesn't cover situations where the media lacks metadata, either because the format doesn't support metadata or the metadata is missing. It also doesn't protect you against claims that you injected the CC metadata against the wishes of a non-CC-using copyright owner. I don't see where the CC metadata includes any sort of digital signature to tie the license to the media and copyright holder in a form that prevents repudiation.

Some types of media support metadata, and Creative Commons has the means for putting license metadata in such media. See the Creative Commons Tools and Developer Wiki pages for details.

That doesn't cover situations where the media lacks metadata, either because the format doesn't support metadata or the metadata is missing. It also doesn't protect you against claims that you injected the CC metadata against the wishes of a non-CC-using copyright owner. I don't see where the CC metadata includes any sort of digital signature to tie the license to the media and copyright holder in a form that prevents repudiation.

there is....

http://creativecommons.org/

also shameless plug http://zenapolae.com/

And good luck.

I'm an independent filmmaker who releases all my movies under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 License that allows anyone to freely copy, distribute, display, and perform my work.

This pro **AA act could be the nail in the coffin for not only the Creative Commons, but MY freedom as an artist.

I admit I am Anti-DRM, but there's two sides to every viewpoint. When big business wants to trample on MY rights, they'll trample on yours next. Call your House and Congressional representatives immediately to stop allowing big business interests to stomp on the rights of the actual artist.

Although my rant here is over, I won't quit until this legislation is dropped in a hole, set aflame and then buried.

I have not read the act itself but the TFA (and summary) is worded in such a way that implies that it applies across the board regardless; whether the content is free or not. What about all those podcasts with 100% legal content? Music from the podsafe music network or other Creative Commons licensed work for instance?

Implement a DRM system but do not force us to use it. I would much prefer the RIAA simply not license content to DRM free broadcasts and sue those who don't have a license.

Requiring DRM by law for all statutory licensed work is massive overkill.