ii Made With Creative Commons MADE WITH CREATIVE COMMONS PAUL STACEY AND SARAH HINCHLIFF PEARSON Made With Creative Commons iii Made With Creative Commons by Paul Stacey & Sarah Hinchliff Pearson © 2017, by Creative Commons. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license (CC BY-SA), version 4.0. ISBN 978-87-998733-3-3 Cover and interior design by Klaus Nielsen, vinterstille.dk Content editing by Grace Yaginuma Illustrations by Bryan Mathers, bryanmathers.com Downloadable e-book available at madewith.cc Publisher: Ctrl+Alt+Delete Books Husumgade 10, 5. 2200 Copenhagen N Denmark www.cadb.dk [email protected] Printer: Drukarnia POZKAL Spółka z o.o. Spółka komandytowa 88-100 Inowrocław, ul. Cegielna 10/12, Poland This book is published under a CC BY-SA license, which means that you can copy, redistribute, remix, transform, and build upon the content for any purpose, even commercially, as long as you give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original. License details: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Made With Creative Commons is published with the kind support of Creative Commons and backers of our crowdfunding-campaign on the Kickstarter.com platform. iv Made With Creative Commons “I don’t know a whole lot about non- fiction journalism. The way that I think about these things, and in terms of what I can do is. essays like this are occasions to watch somebody reason- ably bright but also reasonably average pay far closer attention and think at far more length about all sorts of different stuff than most of us have a chance to in our daily lives.” - DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Made With Creative Commons v vi Made With Creative Commons CONTENTS Foreword xi Introduction xv PART 1: THE BIG PICTURE 1 The New World of Digital Commons by Paul Stacey 3 The Commons, the Market, and the State . 4 The Four Aspects of a Resource . 5 A Short History of the Commons . 7 The Digital Revolution . 10 The Birth of Creative Commons . 10 The Changing Market . 11 Benefits of the Digital Commons . 13 Our Case Studies. 14 2 How to Be Made with Creative Commons by Sarah Hinchliff Pearson 19 Problem Zero: Getting Discovered. 22 Making Money . 26 Making Human Connections . 30 3 The Creative Commons Licenses 39 PART 2: THE CASE STUDIES Arduino . 47 Ártica . 51 Blender Institute . 55 Cards Against Humanity . 59 The Conversation . 63 Cory Doctorow . 67 Figshare . 71 Figure.nz . 75 Knowledge Unlatched . 79 Lumen Learning . 83 Jonathan Mann . 87 Made With Creative Commons vii Noun Project . 91 Open Data Institute . 95 Opendesk . 99 OpenStax . 105 Amanda Palmer . 109 PLOS (Public Library of Science) . 113 Rijksmuseum . 117 Shareable . 121 Siyavula . 125 SparkFun . 131 TeachAIDS. 135 Tribe of Noise. 139 Wikimedia Foundation . 143 Bibliography . 147 Acknowledgments . 151 viii Made With Creative Commons Made With Creative Commons ix x Made With Creative Commons FOREWORD Three years ago, just after I was hired as CEO of in their case study: “We don’t make jokes and Creative Commons, I met with Cory Doctorow games to make money—we make money so in the hotel bar of Toronto’s Gladstone Hotel. we can make more jokes and games.” As one of CC’s most well-known proponents— Creative Commons’ focus is on building a one who has also had a successful career as vibrant, usable commons, powered by collab- a writer who shares his work using CC—I told oration and gratitude. Enabling communities him I thought CC had a role in defining and ad- of collaboration is at the heart of our strategy. vancing open business models. He kindly dis- With that in mind, Creative Commons began agreed, and called the pursuit of viable busi- this book project. Led by Paul and Sarah, the ness models through CC “a red herring.” project set out to define and advance the best He was, in a way, completely correct—those open business models. Paul and Sarah were who make things with Creative Commons have the ideal authors to write Made with Creative ulterior motives, as Paul Stacey explains in this Commons. book: “Regardless of legal status, they all have Paul dreams of a future where new mod- a social mission. Their primary reason for be- els of creativity and innovation overpower the ing is to make the world a better place, not to inequality and scarcity that today define the profit. Money is a means to a social end, not worst parts of capitalism. He is driven by the the end itself.” power of human connections between com- In the case study about Cory Doctorow, Sar- munities of creators. He takes a longer view ah Hinchliff Pearson cites Cory’s words from than most, and it’s made him a better educa- his book Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free: tor, an insightful researcher, and also a skilled “Entering the arts because you want to get rich gardener. He has a calm, cool voice that con- is like buying lottery tickets because you want veys a passion that inspires his colleagues and to get rich. It might work, but it almost certain- community. ly won’t. Though, of course, someone always Sarah is the best kind of lawyer—a true wins the lottery.” advocate who believes in the good of people, Today, copyright is like a lottery ticket— and the power of collective acts to change everyone has one, and almost nobody wins. the world. Over the past year I’ve seen Sarah What they don’t tell you is that if you choose struggle with the heartbreak that comes from to share your work, the returns can be signif- investing so much into a political campaign icant and long-lasting. This book is filled with that didn’t end as she’d hoped. Today, she’s stories of those who take much greater risks more determined than ever to live with her than the two dollars we pay for a lottery ticket, values right out on her sleeve. I can always and instead reap the rewards that come from count on Sarah to push Creative Commons to pursuing their passions and living their values. focus on our impact—to make the main thing So it’s not about the money. Also: it is. Find- the main thing. She’s practical, detail-oriented, ing the means to continue to create and share and clever. There’s no one on my team that I often requires some amount of income. Max enjoy debating more. Temkin of Cards Against Humanity says it best Made With Creative Commons xi As coauthors, Paul and Sarah complement Jonathan Mann, who is profiled in this book, each other perfectly. They researched, ana- writes a song a day. When I reached out to ask lyzed, argued, and worked as a team, some- him to write a song for our Kickstarter (and to times together and sometimes independently. offer himself up as a Kickstarter benefit), he They dove into the research and writing with agreed immediately. Why would he agree to passion and curiosity, and a deep respect for do that? Because the commons has collabora- what goes into building the commons and tion at its core, and community as a key value, sharing with the world. They remained open and because the CC licenses have helped so to new ideas, including the possibility that many to share in the ways that they choose their initial theories would need refinement with a global audience. or might be completely wrong. That’s coura- Sarah writes, “Endeavors that are Made geous, and it has made for a better book that with Creative Commons thrive when com- is insightful, honest, and useful. munity is built around what they do. This may From the beginning, CC wanted to develop mean a community collaborating together to this project with the principles and values of create something new, or it may simply be a open collaboration. The book was funded, de- collection of like-minded people who get to veloped, researched, and written in the open. know each other and rally around common in- It is being shared openly under a CC BY-SA li- terests or beliefs. To a certain extent, simply cense for anyone to use, remix, or adapt with being Made with Creative Commons auto- attribution. It is, in itself, an example of an matically brings with it some element of com- open business model. munity, by helping connect you to like-minded For 31 days in August of 2015, Sarah took others who recognize and are drawn to the val- point to organize and execute a Kickstarter ues symbolized by using CC.” Amanda Palmer, campaign to generate the core funding for the the other musician profiled in the book, would book. The remainder was provided by CC’s surely add this from her case study: “There is generous donors and supporters. In the end, no more satisfying end goal than having some- it became one of the most successful book one tell you that what you do is genuinely of projects on Kickstarter, smashing through value to them.” two stretch goals and engaging over 1,600 do- nors—the majority of them new supporters of Creative Commons. Paul and Sarah worked openly throughout This is not a typical business book. For those the project, publishing the plans, drafts, case looking for a recipe or a roadmap, you might studies, and analysis, early and often, and be disappointed.