MADE WITH CREATIVE COMMONS

open to input was the writing, the music it-
self.”71

While we tend to immediately think of co-
creation and remixing when we hear the word
collaboration, you can also involve others in
your creative process in more informal ways,
by sharing half-baked ideas and early drafts,
and interacting with the public to incubate
ideas and get feedback. So-called “making in
public” opens the door to letting people feel
more invested in your creative work.72 And it
shows a nonterritorial approach to ideas and
information. Stephen Covey (of The 7 Hab-
its of Highly Effective People fame) calls this
the abundance mentality—treating ideas like
something plentiful—and it can create an en-
vironment where collaboration flourishes.73

There is no one way to involve people in
what you do. They key is finding a way for peo-
ple to contribute on their terms, compelled by
their own motivations.74 What that looks like
varies wildly depending on the project. Not
every endeavor that is Made with Creative
Commons can be Wikipedia, but every en-
deavor can find ways to invite the public into
what they do. The goal for any form of collab-
oration is to move away from thinking of con-
sumers as passive recipients of your content
and transition them into active participants.75

Made With Creative Commons 35

Notes 14 Anderson, Free, 86.

1 Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, Busi- 15 Doctorow, Information Doesn’t Want to Be
ness Model Generation (Hoboken, NJ: John Free, 144.
Wiley and Sons, 2010), 14. A preview of
the book is available at strategyzer.com 16 Anderson, Free, 123.
/books/business-model-generation.
17 Ibid., 132.
2 Cory Doctorow, Information Doesn’t Want
to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age (San 18 Ibid., 70.
Francisco, CA: McSweeney’s, 2014) 68.
19 James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds
3 Ibid., 55. (New York: Anchor Books, 2005), 124.
Surowiecki says, “The measure of suc-
4 Chris Anderson, Free: How Today’s Smart- cess of laws and contracts is how rarely
est Businesses Profit by Giving Something they are invoked.”
for Nothing, reprint with new preface
(New York: Hyperion, 2010), 224. 20 Anderson, Free, 44.

5 Doctorow, Information Doesn’t Want to Be 21 Osterwalder and Pigneur, Business Model
Free, 44. Generation, 23.

6 Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking: Or 22 Anderson, Free, 67.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let
People Help (New York: Grand Central, 23 Ibid., 58.
2014), 121.
24 Anderson, Makers, 71.
7 Chris Anderson, Makers: The New Indus-
trial Revolution (New York: Signal, 2012), 25 Clay Shirky, Cognitive Surplus: How Tech-
64. nology Makes Consumers into Collabora-
tors (London: Penguin Books, 2010), 78.
8 David Bollier, Think Like a Commoner: A
Short Introduction to the Life of the Com- 26 Ibid., 21.
mons (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society,
2014), 70. 27 Doctorow, Information Doesn’t Want to Be
Free, 43.
9 Anderson, Makers, 66.
28 William Landes Foster, Peter Kim, and
10 Bryan Kramer, Shareology: How Sharing Is Barbara Christiansen, “Ten Nonprofit
Powering the Human Economy (New York: Funding Models,” Stanford Social Innova-
Morgan James, 2016), 10. tion Review, Spring 2009, ssir.org/articles
/entry/ten_nonprofit_funding_models.
11 Anderson, Free, 62.
29 Shirky, Cognitive Surplus, 111.
12 Doctorow, Information Doesn’t Want to Be
Free, 38. 30 Osterwalder and Pigneur, Business Model
Generation, 30.
13 Bollier, Think Like a Commoner, 68.

36 Made With Creative Commons

31 Jim Whitehurst, The Open Organization: 50 Ibid., 31.
Igniting Passion and Performance (Boston:
Harvard Business Review Press, 2015), 51 Shirky, Cognitive Surplus, 112.
202.
52 Surowiecki, Wisdom of Crowds, 124.
32 Anderson, Free, 71.
53 Kleon, Show Your Work, 127.
33 Ibid., 231.
54 Palmer, Art of Asking, 121.
34 Ibid., 97.
55 Ariely, Predictably Irrational, 87.
35 Anderson, Makers, 107.
56 Ibid., 105.
36 Osterwalder and Pigneur, Business Model
Generation, 89. 57 Ibid., 36.

37 Ibid., 92. 58 Jono Bacon, The Art of Community, 2nd
ed. (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media,
38 Anderson, Free, 142. 2012), 36.

39 Osterwalder and Pigneur, Business Model 59 Palmer, Art of Asking, 98.
Generation, 32.
60 Whitehurst, Open Organization, 34.
40 Bollier, Think Like a Commoner, 150.
61 Surowiecki, Wisdom of Crowds, 200.
41 Ibid., 134.
62 Bollier, Think Like a Commoner, 29.
42 Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational: The Hid-
den Forces That Shape Our Decisions, rev. 63 Giana Eckhardt and Fleura Bardhi, “The
ed. (New York: Harper Perennial, 2010), Sharing Economy Isn’t about Sharing at
109. All,” Harvard Business Review (website),
January 28, 2015, hbr.org/2015/01
43 Austin Kleon, Show Your Work: 10 Ways to /the-sharing-economy-isnt-about
Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered -sharing-at-all.
(New York: Workman, 2014), 93.
64 Lisa Gansky, The Mesh: Why the Future
44 Kramer, Shareology, 76. of Business Is Sharing, reprint with new
epilogue (New York: Portfolio, 2012).
45 Palmer, Art of Asking, 252.
65 David Lee, “Inside Medium: An Attempt
46 Whitehurst, Open Organization, 145. to Bring Civility to the Internet,” BBC
News, March 3, 2016, www.bbc.com
47 Surowiecki, Wisdom of Crowds, 203. /news/technology-35709680.

48 Whitehurst, Open Organization, 80. 66 Anderson, Makers, 148.

49 Bollier, Think Like a Commoner, 25. 67 Shirky, Cognitive Surplus, 164.

Made With Creative Commons 37

68 Whitehurst, foreword to Open
Organization.

69 Shirky, Cognitive Surplus, 144.
70 Ibid., 154.
71 Palmer, Art of Asking, 163.
72 Anderson, Makers, 173.
73 Tom Kelley and David Kelley, Creative

Confidence: Unleashing the Potential within
Us All (New York: Crown, 2013), 82.
74 Whitehurst, foreword to Open
Organization.
75 Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers, What’s
Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative
Consumption (New York: Harper Busi-
ness, 2010), 188.

38 Made With Creative Commons

THE 3
CREATIVE
COMMONS
LICENSES

All of the Creative Commons licenses grant a licenses offered. Recommended for maximum
basic set of permissions. At a minimum, a CC- dissemination and use of licensed materials.
licensed work can be copied and shared in its
original form for noncommercial purposes so The Attribution-Share-
long as attribution is given to the creator. There Alike license (CC BY-
are six licenses in the CC license suite that SA) lets others remix,
build on that basic set of permissions, ranging tweak, and build upon your work, even for
from the most restrictive (allowing only those commercial purposes, as long as they cred-
basic permissions to share unmodified cop- it you and license their new creations under
ies for noncommercial purposes) to the most identical terms. This license is often compared
permissive (reusers can do anything they want to “copyleft” free and open source software li-
with the work, even for commercial purposes, censes. All new works based on yours will car-
as long as they give the creator credit). The li- ry the same license, so any derivatives will also
censes are built on copyright and do not cover allow commercial use.
other types of rights that creators might have
in their works, like patents or trademarks. The Attribution-NoDerivs
license (CC BY-ND) al-
Here are the six licenses: lows for redistribution,
commercial and noncommercial, as long as it
The Attribution license is passed along unchanged with credit to you.
(CC BY) lets others dis-
tribute, remix, tweak,
and build upon your work, even commercial-
ly, as long as they credit you for the original
creation. This is the most accommodating of

Made With Creative Commons 39

The Attribution-Non- licenses coming up in four or so case studies,
Commercial license (CC including the public-domain tool CC0. Some of
BY-NC) lets others re- the organizations we profiled offer both digital
mix, tweak, and build upon your work noncom- content and software: by using open-source-
mercially. Although their new works must also software licenses for the software code and
acknowledge you, they don’t have to license Creative Commons licenses for digital content,
their derivative works on the same terms. they amplify their involvement with and com-
mitment to sharing.
The Attribution-Non-
Commercial-ShareAlike There is a popular misconception that the
license (CC BY-NC-SA) three NonCommercial licenses offered by CC
lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your are the only options for those who want to
work noncommercially, as long as they credit make money off their work. As we hope this
you and license their new creations under the book makes clear, there are many ways to
same terms. make endeavors that are Made with Creative
Commons sustainable. Reserving commercial
The Attribution-Non- rights is only one of those ways. It is certainly
Commercial-NoDerivs true that a license that allows others to make
license (CC BY-NC-ND) is commercial use of your work (CC BY, CC BY-SA,
the most restrictive of our six main licenses, and CC BY-ND) forecloses some traditional rev-
only allowing others to download your works enue streams. If you apply an Attribution (CC
and share them with others as long as they BY) license to your book, you can’t force a film
credit you, but they can’t change them or use company to pay you royalties if they turn your
them commercially. book into a feature-length film, or prevent an-
other company from selling physical copies of
In addition to these six licenses, Creative Com- your work.
mons has two public-domain tools—one for
creators and the other for those who manage The decision to choose a NonCommercial
collections of existing works by authors whose and/or NoDerivs license comes down to how
terms of copyright have expired: much you need to retain control over the cre-
ative work. The NonCommercial and NoDerivs
CC0 enables authors licenses are ways of reserving some significant
and copyright owners portion of the exclusive bundle of rights that
to dedicate their works copyright grants to creators. In some cases,
to the worldwide public domain (“no rights re- reserving those rights is important to how you
served”). bring in revenue. In other cases, creators use a
NonCommercial or NoDerivs license because
The Creative Commons they can’t give up on the dream of hitting the
Public Domain Mark fa- creative jackpot. The music platform Tribe of
cilitates the labeling and Noise told us the NonCommercial licenses
discovery of works that are already free of were popular among their users because peo-
known copyright restrictions. ple still held out the dream of having a major
record label discover their work.
In our case studies, some use just one Cre-
ative Commons license, others use several. At- Other times the decision to use a more re-
tribution (found in thirteen case studies) and strictive license is due to a concern about the
Attribution-ShareAlike (found in eight stud- integrity of the work. For example, the non-
ies) were the most common, with the other profit TeachAIDS uses a NoDerivs license for
its educational materials because the medical
subject matter is particularly important to get
right.

40 Made With Creative Commons

There is no one right way. The NonCom-
mercial and NoDerivs restrictions reflect the
values and preferences of creators about how
their creative work should be reused, just as
the ShareAlike license reflects a different set
of values, one that is less about controlling ac-
cess to their own work and more about ensur-
ing that whatever gets created with their work
is available to all on the same terms. Since the
beginning of the commons, people have been
setting up structures that helped regulate the
way in which shared resources were used.
The CC licenses are an attempt to standardize
norms across all domains.

Note
For more about the licenses including ex-
amples and tips on sharing your work in the
digital commons, start with the Creative
Commons page called “Share Your Work” at
creativecommons.org/share-your-work/.

Made With Creative Commons 41

42 Made With Creative Commons

Part2

THE
CASE STUDIES

Made With Creative Commons 43

44 Made With Creative Commons

The twenty-four case studies in this section
were chosen from hundreds of nominations
received from Kickstarter backers, Creative
Commons staff, and the global Creative Com-
mons community. We selected eighty poten-
tial candidates that represented a mix of in-
dustries, content types, revenue streams, and
parts of the world. Twelve of the case studies
were selected from that group based on votes
cast by Kickstarter backers, and the other
twelve were selected by us.

We did background research and conduct-
ed interviews for each case study, based on
the same set of basic questions about the
endeavor. The idea for each case study is to
tell the story about the endeavor and the role
sharing plays within it, largely the way in which
it was told to us by those we interviewed.

Made With Creative Commons 45

46 Made With Creative Commons

ARDUINO

Arduino is a for-profit open-source electronics Revenue model: charging for physical copies
platform and computer hardware and soft- (sales of boards, modules, shields, and kits),
ware company. Founded in 2005 in Italy. licensing a trademark (fees paid by those
who want to sell Arduino products using their
www arduino cc name)

Interview date: February 4, 2016
Interviewees: David Cuartielles and Tom Igoe, cofounders

Profile written by Paul Stacey

In 2005, at the Interaction Design Institute ing something online. You send a set of instruc-
Ivrea in northern Italy, teachers and students tions to the microcontroller on the board by
needed an easy way to use electronics and pro- using the Arduino programming language and
gramming to quickly prototype design ideas. As Arduino software (based on a piece of open-
musicians, artists, and designers, they needed source software called Processing, a program-
a platform that didn’t require engineering ex- ming tool used to make visual art).
pertise. A group of teachers and students, in-
cluding Massimo Banzi, David Cuartielles, Tom “The reasons for making Arduino open
Igoe, Gianluca Martino, and David Mellis, built source are complicated,” Tom says. Partly it
a platform that combined different open tech- was about supporting flexibility. The open-
nologies. They called it Arduino. The platform source nature of Arduino empowers users
integrated software, hardware, microcontrol- to modify it and create a lot of different vari-
lers, and electronics. All aspects of the platform ations, adding on top of what the founders
were openly licensed: hardware designs and build. David says this “ended up strengthen-
documentation with the Attribution-Share- ing the platform far beyond what we had even
Alike license (CC BY-SA), and software with the thought of building.”
GNU General Public License.
For Tom another factor was the impend-
Arduino boards are able to read inputs— ing closure of the Ivrea design school. He’d
light on a sensor, a finger on a button, or a seen other organizations close their doors
Twitter message—and turn it into outputs— and all their work and research just disappear.
activating a motor, turning on an LED, publish- Open-sourcing ensured that Arduino would
outlive the Ivrea closure. Persistence is one

Made With Creative Commons 47

thing Tom really likes about open source. If vides a wiki called Playground (a wiki is where
key people leave, or a company shuts down, all users can edit and add pages, contributing
an open-source product lives on. In Tom’s to and benefiting from collective research).
view, “Open sourcing makes it easier to trust a People share code, circuit diagrams, tutorials,
product.” DIY instructions, and tips and tricks, and show
off their projects. In addition, there’s a multi-
With the school closing, David and some of the language discussion forum where users can
other Arduino founders started a consulting get help using Arduino, discuss topics like ro-
firm and multidisciplinary design studio they botics, and make suggestions for new Arduino
called Tinker, in London. Tinker designed prod- product designs. As of January 2017, 324,928
ucts and services that bridged the digital and members had made 2,989,489 posts on
the physical, and they taught people how to 379,044 topics. The worldwide community of
use new technologies in creative ways. Rev- makers has contributed an incredible amount
enue from Tinker was invested in sustaining of accessible knowledge helpful to novices and
and enhancing Arduino. experts alike.

For Tom, part of Arduino’s success is be- Transitioning Arduino from a project to a
cause the founders made themselves the company was a big step. Other businesses
first customer of their product. They made who made boards were charging a lot of mon-
products they themselves personally want- ey for them. Arduino wanted to make theirs
ed. It was a matter of “I need this thing,” not available at a low price to people across a wide
“If we make this, we’ll make a lot of money.” range of industries. As with any business, pric-
Tom notes that being your own first customer ing was key. They wanted prices that would get
makes you more confident and convincing at lots of customers but were also high enough
selling your product. to sustain the business.

Arduino’s business model has evolved over For a business, getting to the end of the year
time—and Tom says model is a grandiose term and not being in the red is a success. Arduino
for it. Originally, they just wanted to make a may have an open-licensing strategy, but they
few boards and get them out into the world. are still a business, and all the things needed to
They started out with two hundred boards, successfully run one still apply. David says, “If
sold them, and made a little profit. They used you do those other things well, sharing things
that to make another thousand, which gener- in an open-source way can only help you.”
ated enough revenue to make five thousand.
In the early days, they simply tried to generate While openly licensing the designs, docu-
enough funding to keep the venture going day mentation, and software ensures longevity,
to day. When they hit the ten thousand mark, it does have risks. There’s a possibility that
they started to think about Arduino as a com- others will create knockoffs, clones, and cop-
pany. By then it was clear you can open-source ies. The CC BY-SA license means anyone can
the design but still manufacture the physical produce copies of their boards, redesign them,
product. As long as it’s a quality product and and even sell boards that copy the design.
sold at a reasonable price, people will buy it. They don’t have to pay a license fee to Ardu-
ino or even ask permission. However, if they
Arduino now has a worldwide community republish the design of the board, they have
of makers—students, hobbyists, artists, pro- to give attribution to Arduino. If they change
grammers, and professionals. Arduino pro- the design, they must release the new design
using the same Creative Commons license to
ensure that the new version is equally free and
open.

Tom and David say that a lot of people have
built companies off of Arduino, with dozens of

48 Made With Creative Commons

Arduino derivatives out there. But in contrast building of community; this focus is one of the
to closed business models that can wring mon- keys to their success. And being open lets you
ey out of the system over many years because build a real community. David says Arduino’s
there is no competition, Arduino founders community is a big strength and something
saw competition as keeping them honest, and that really does matter—in his words, “It’s
aimed for an environment of collaboration. A good business.” When they started, the Ardu-
benefit of open over closed is the many new ino team had almost entirely no idea how to
ideas and designs others have contributed build a community. They started by conduct-
back to the Arduino ecosystem, ideas and de- ing numerous workshops, working directly
signs that Arduino and the Arduino communi- with people using the platform to make sure
ty use and incorporate into new products. the hardware and software worked the way it
was meant to work and solved people’s prob-
Over time, the range of Arduino products lems. The community grew organically from
has diversified, changing and adapting to new there.
needs and challenges. In addition to simple
entry level boards, new products have been A key decision for Arduino was trademark-
added ranging from enhanced boards that ing the name. The founders needed a way to
provide advanced functionality and faster per- guarantee to people that they were buying a
formance, to boards for creating Internet of quality product from a company committed to
Things applications, wearables, and 3-D print- open-source values and knowledge sharing.
ing. The full range of official Arduino products Trademarking the Arduino name and logo ex-
includes boards, modules (a smaller form-fac- presses that guarantee and helps customers
tor of classic boards), shields (elements that easily identify their products, and the prod-
can be plugged onto a board to give it extra ucts sanctioned by them. If others want to sell
features), and kits.1 boards using the Arduino name and logo, they
have to pay a small fee to Arduino. This allows
THE OPEN-SOURCE NATURE OF Arduino to scale up manufacturing and dis-
tribution while at the same time ensuring the
ARDUINO EMPOWERS USERS Arduino brand isn’t hurt by low-quality copies.

TO MODIFY IT AND CREATE A Current official manufacturers are Smart
Projects in Italy, SparkFun in the United States,
LOT OF DIFFERENT VARIATIONS, and Dog Hunter in Taiwan/China. These are
the only manufacturers that are allowed to use
STRENGTHENING THE the Arduino logo on their boards. Trademark-
ing their brand provided the founders with a
PLATFORM FAR BEYOND WHAT way to protect Arduino, build it out further,
and fund software and tutorial development.
THE FOUNDERS THOUGHT OF The trademark-licensing fee for the brand be-
came Arduino’s revenue-generating model.
BUILDING
How far to open things up wasn’t always
Arduino’s focus is on high-quality boards, something the founders perfectly agreed
well-designed support materials, and the on. David, who was always one to advocate
for opening things up more, had some fears
about protecting the Arduino name, think-
ing people would be mad if they policed their
brand. There was some early backlash with

Made With Creative Commons 49

a project called Freeduino, but overall, trade- technology in many different ways. Technolo-
marking and branding has been a critical tool gy is always making more things possible but
for Arduino. doesn’t always focus on making it easy to use
and adapt. This is where Arduino steps in. Ar-
David encourages people and business- duino’s goal is “making things that help other
es to start by sharing everything as a default people make things.”
strategy, and then think about whether there
is anything that really needs to be protected Arduino has been hugely successful in mak-
and why. There are lots of good reasons to ing technology and electronics reach a larger
not open up certain elements. This strategy audience. For Tom, Arduino has been about
of sharing everything is certainly the complete “the democratization of technology.” Tom sees
opposite of how today’s world operates, where Arduino’s open-source strategy as helping the
nothing is shared. Tom suggests a business world get over the idea that technology has to
formalize which elements are based on open be protected. Tom says, “Technology is a liter-
sharing and which are closed. An Arduino blog acy everyone should learn.”
post from 2013 entitled “Send In the Clones,”
by one of the founders Massimo Banzi, does Ultimately, for Arduino, going open has
a great job of explaining the full complexities been good business—good for product devel-
of how trademarking their brand has played opment, good for distribution, good for pric-
out, distinguishing between official boards ing, and good for manufacturing.
and those that are clones, derivatives, compat-
ibles, and counterfeits.2 Web links
1 www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Products
For David, an exciting aspect of Arduino 2 blog.arduino.cc/2013/07/10/send-in-the
is the way lots of people can use it to adapt
-clones/

50 Made With Creative Commons

ÁRTICA

Ártica provides online courses and consulting www articaonline com
services focused on how to use digital tech-
nology to share knowledge and enable collab- Revenue model: charging for custom
oration in arts and culture. Founded in 2011 services
in Uruguay.

Interview date: March 9, 2016
Interviewees: Mariana Fossatti and Jorge Gemetto, cofounders

Profile written by Sarah Hinchliff Pearson

The story of Mariana Fossatti and Jorge Ge- Ártica feels like a uniquely twenty-first cen-
metto’s business, Ártica, is the ultimate ex- tury business. The small company has a global
ample of DIY. Not only are they successful online presence with no physical offices. Jorge
entrepreneurs, the niche in which their small and Mariana live in Uruguay, and the other
business operates is essentially one they built two full-time employees, who Jorge and Mar-
themselves. iana have never actually met in person, live in
Spain. They started by creating a MOOC (mas-
Their dream jobs didn’t exist, so they creat- sive open online course) about remix culture
ed them. and collaboration in the arts, which gave them
a direct way to reach an international audience,
In 2011, Mariana was a sociologist working attracting students from across Latin America
for an international organization to develop and Spain. In other words, it is the classic Inter-
research and online education about rural-de- net story of being able to directly tap into an
velopment issues. Jorge was a psychologist, audience without relying upon gatekeepers or
also working in online education. Both were intermediaries.
bloggers and heavy users of social media, and
both had a passion for arts and culture. They Ártica offers personalized education and
decided to take their skills in digital technol- consulting services, and helps clients imple-
ogy and online learning and apply them to a ment projects. All of these services are cus-
topic area they loved. They launched Ártica, an tomized. They call it an “artisan” process be-
online business that provides education and cause of the time and effort it takes to adapt
consulting for people and institutions creating their work for the particular needs of students
artistic and cultural projects on the Internet.

Made With Creative Commons 51

IN THE EDUCATIONAL AND students and clients. Everything they create—
online education, blog posts, videos—is pub-
CULTURAL BUSINESS, IT IS MORE lished under an Attribution-ShareAlike license
(CC BY-SA). “We use a ShareAlike license be-
IMPORTANT TO PAY ATTENTION cause we want to give the greatest freedom to
our students and readers, and we also want
TO PEOPLE AND PROCESS, RATHER that freedom to be viral,” Jorge said. For them,
giving others the right to reuse and remix their
THAN CONTENT OR SPECIFIC content is a fundamental value. “How can you
offer an online educational service without giv-
FORMATS OR MATERIALS ing permission to download, make and keep
copies, or print the educational resources?”
and clients. “Each student or client is paying Jorge said. “If we want to do the best for our
for a specific solution to his or her problems students—those who trust in us to the point
and questions,” Mariana said. Rather than sell that they are willing to pay online without face-
access to their content, they provide it for free to-face contact—we have to offer them a fair
and charge for the personalized services. and ethical agreement.”

When they started, they offered a smaller They also believe sharing their ideas and ex-
number of courses designed to attract large pertise openly helps them build their reputa-
audiences. “Over the years, we realized that tion and visibility. People often share and cite
online communities are more specific than we their work. A few years ago, a publisher even
thought,” Mariana said. Ártica now provides picked up one of their e-books and distribut-
more options for classes and has lower enroll- ed printed copies. Ártica views reuse of their
ment in each course. This means they can pro- work as a way to open up new opportunities
vide more attention to individual students and for their business.
offer classes on more specialized topics.
This belief that openness creates new op-
Online courses are their biggest revenue portunities reflects another belief—in ser-
stream, but they also do more than a dozen endipity. When describing their process for
consulting projects each year, ranging from creating content, they spoke of all of the spon-
digitization to event planning to marketing taneous and organic ways they find inspira-
campaigns. Some are significant in scope, par- tion. “Sometimes, the collaborative process
ticularly when they work with cultural institu- starts with a conversation between us, or
tions, and some are smaller projects commis- with friends from other projects,” Jorge said.
sioned by individual artists. “That can be the first step for a new blog post
or another simple piece of content, which can
Ártica also seeks out public and private evolve to a more complex product in the fu-
funding for specific projects. Sometimes, even ture, like a course or a book.”
if they are unsuccessful in subsidizing a proj-
ect like a new course or e-book, they will go Rather than planning their work in advance,
ahead because they believe in it. They take the they let their creative process be dynamic.
stance that every new project leads them to “This doesn’t mean that we don’t need to work
something new, every new resource they cre- hard in order to get good professional results,
ate opens new doors. but the design process is more flexible,” Jorge
said. They share early and often, and they ad-
Ártica relies heavily on their free Creative just based on what they learn, always explor-
Commons–licensed content to attract new ing and testing new ideas and ways of operat-
ing. In many ways, for them, the process is just
as important as the final product.

52 Made With Creative Commons

People and relationships are also just as im- Of course, Ártica also has to make enough
portant, sometimes more. “In the educational money to cover its expenses. Human resourc-
and cultural business, it is more important to es are, by far, their biggest expense. They tap
pay attention to people and process, rather a network of collaborators on a case-by-case
than content or specific formats or materials,” basis and hire contractors for specific projects.
Mariana said. “Materials and content are fluid. Whenever possible, they draw from artistic
The important thing is the relationships.” and cultural resources in the commons, and
they rely on free software. Their operation is
Ártica believes in the power of the network. small, efficient, and sustainable, and because
They seek to make connections with people of that, it is a success.
and institutions across the globe so they can
learn from them and share their knowledge. “There are lots of people offering online
courses,” Jorge said. “But it is easy to differen-
At the core of everything Ártica does is a set tiate us. We have an approach that is very spe-
of values. “Good content is not enough,” Jorge cific and personal.” Ártica’s model is rooted in
said. “We also think that it is very important the personal at every level. For Mariana and
to take a stand for some things in the cultural Jorge, success means doing what brings them
sector.” Mariana and Jorge are activists. They personal meaning and purpose, and doing it
defend free culture (the movement promoting sustainably and collaboratively.
the freedom to modify and distribute creative
work) and work to demonstrate the intersec- In their work with younger artists, Mariana
tion between free culture and other social-jus- and Jorge try to emphasize that this model of
tice movements. Their efforts to involve people success is just as valuable as the picture of
in their work and enable artists and cultural in- success we get from the media. “If they seek
stitutions to better use technology are all tied only the traditional type of success, they will
closely to their belief system. Ultimately, what get frustrated,” Mariana said. “We try to show
drives their work is a mission to democratize them another image of what it looks like.”
art and culture.

Made With Creative Commons 53

54 Made With Creative Commons

BLENDER
INSTITUTE

The Blender Institute is an animation studio Revenue model: crowdfunding (subscrip-
that creates 3-D films using Blender software. tion-based), charging for physical copies,
Founded in 2006 in the Netherlands. selling merchandise

www blender org

Interview date: March 8, 2016
Interviewee: Francesco Siddi, production coordinator

Profile written by Sarah Hinchliff Pearson

For Ton Roosendaal, the creator of Blender because the technical team responds directly
software and its related entities, sharing is to the needs of the film production team, cre-
practical. Making their 3-D content creation ating tools and features that make their lives
software available under a free software li- easier. And, of course, each project involves a
cense has been integral to its development long, rewarding process for the creative and
and popularity. Using that software to make technical community working together.
movies that were licensed with Creative Com-
mons pushed that development even further. Rather than just talking about the theoret-
Sharing enables people to participate and to ical benefits of sharing and free culture, Ton
interact with and build upon the technology is very much about doing and making free cul-
and content they create in a way that benefits ture. Blender’s production coordinator Fran-
Blender and its community in concrete ways. cesco Siddi told us, “Ton believes if you don’t
make content using your tools, then you’re not
Each open-movie project Blender runs pro- doing anything.”
duces a host of openly licensed outputs, not
just the final film itself but all of the source ma-
terial as well. The creative process also enhanc-
es the development of the Blender software

Made With Creative Commons 55

Blender’s history begins in the late 1990s, They turned to crowdfunding to subsidize
when Ton created the Blender software. Orig- the costs of the project. They had about twenty
inally, the software was an in-house resource people working full-time for six to ten months,
for his animation studio based in the Nether- so the costs were significant. Francesco said
lands. Investors became interested in the soft- that when their crowdfunding campaign suc-
ware, so he began marketing the software to ceeded, people were astounded. “The idea
the public, offering a free version in addition to that making money was possible by producing
a paid version. Sales were disappointing, and CC-licensed material was mind-blowing to peo-
his investors gave up on the endeavor in the ple,” he said. “They were like, ‘I have to see it to
early 2000s. He made a deal with investors—if believe it.’”
he could raise enough money, he could then
make the Blender software available under The first film, which was released in 2006,
the GNU General Public License. was an experiment. It was so successful that
Ton decided to set up the Blender Institute,
This was long before Kickstarter and other an entity dedicated to hosting open-movie
online crowdfunding sites existed, but Ton ran projects. The Blender Institute’s next project
his own version of a crowdfunding campaign was an even bigger success. The film, Big Buck
and quickly raised the money he needed. The Bunny, went viral, and its animated characters
Blender software became freely available for were picked up by marketers.
anyone to use. Simply applying the General
Public License to the software, however, was Francesco said that, over time, the Blender
not enough to create a thriving community Institute projects have gotten bigger and more
around it. Francesco told us, “Software of this prominent. That means the filmmaking pro-
complexity relies on people and their vision of cess has become more complex, combining
how people work together. Ton is a fantastic technical experts and artists who focus on sto-
community builder and manager, and he put rytelling. Francesco says the process is almost
a lot of work into fostering a community of de- on an industrial scale because of the number
velopers so that the project could live.” of moving parts. This requires a lot of special-
ized assistance, but the Blender Institute has
Like any successful free and open-source no problem finding the talent it needs to help
software project, Blender developed quickly on projects. “Blender hardly does any recruit-
because the community could make fixes and ing for film projects because the talent emerg-
improvements. “Software should be free and es naturally,” Francesco said. “So many people
open to hack,” Francesco said. “Otherwise, ev- want to work with us, and we can’t always hire
eryone is doing the same thing in the dark for them because of budget constraints.”
ten years.” Ton set up the Blender Foundation
to oversee and steward the software develop- Blender has had a lot of success raising mon-
ment and maintenance. ey from its community over the years. In many
ways, the pitch has gotten easier to make. Not
After a few years, Ton began looking for new only is crowdfunding simply more familiar to
ways to push development of the software. He the public, but people know and trust Blender
came up with the idea of creating CC-licensed to deliver, and Ton has developed a reputation
films using the Blender software. Ton put a as an effective community leader and vision-
call online for all interested and skilled artists. ary for their work. “There is a whole commu-
Francesco said the idea was to get the best nity who sees and understands the benefit of
artists available, put them in a building togeth- these projects,” Francesco said.
er with the best developers, and have them
work together. They would not only produce While these benefits of each open-movie
high-quality openly licensed content, they project make a compelling pitch for crowd-
would improve the Blender software in the
process.

56 Made With Creative Commons

TON BELIEVES IF YOU DON’T nue streams, such as the Blender Store, where
people can purchase DVDs, T-shirts, and other
MAKE CONTENT USING YOUR Blender products.

TOOLS, THEN YOU’RE NOT DOING Ton has worked on projects relating to his
Blender software for nearly twenty years.
ANYTHING Throughout most of that time, he has been
committed to making the software and the
funding campaigns, Francesco told us the content produced with the software free and
Blender Institute has found some limitations in open. Selling a license has never been part of
the standard crowdfunding model where you the business model.
propose a specific project and ask for funding.
“Once a project is over, everyone goes home,” Since 2006, he has been making films avail-
he said. “It is great fun, but then it ends. That able along with all of their source material. He
is a problem.” says he has hardly ever seen people stepping
into Blender’s shoes and trying to make mon-
To make their work more sustainable, they ey off of their content. Ton believes this is be-
needed a way to receive ongoing support rath- cause the true value of what they do is in the
er than on a project-by-project basis. Their creative and production process. “Even when
solution is Blender Cloud, a subscription-style you share everything, all your original sources,
crowdfunding model akin to the online crowd- it still takes a lot of talent, skills, time, and bud-
funding platform, Patreon. For about ten euros get to reproduce what you did,” Ton said.
each month, subscribers get access to down-
load everything the Blender Institute produc- For Ton and Blender, it all comes back to
es—software, art, training, and more. All of doing.
the assets are available under an Attribution
license (CC BY) or placed in the public domain
(CC0), but they are initially made available only
to subscribers. Blender Cloud enables sub-
scribers to follow Blender’s movie projects as
they develop, sharing detailed information and
content used in the creative process. Blender
Cloud also has extensive training materials
and libraries of characters and other assets
used in various projects.

The continuous financial support provided
by Blender Cloud subsidizes five to six full-time
employees at the Blender Institute. Francesco
says their goal is to grow their subscriber base.
“This is our freedom,” he told us, “and for art-
ists, freedom is everything.”

Blender Cloud is the primary revenue
stream of the Blender Institute. The Blender
Foundation is funded primarily by donations,
and that money goes toward software develop-
ment and maintenance. The revenue streams
of the Institute and Foundation are deliberate-
ly kept separate. Blender also has other reve-

Made With Creative Commons 57

58 Made With Creative Commons

CARDS AGAINST
HUMANITY

Cards Against Humanity is a private, for-profit www cardsagainsthumanity com
company that makes a popular party game by Revenue model: charging for physical copies
the same name. Founded in 2011 in the U.S.

Interview date: February 3, 2016
Interviewee: Max Temkin, cofounder

Profile written by Sarah Hinchliff Pearson

If you ask cofounder Max Temkin, there is noth- Humanity is the number-one best-selling item
ing particularly interesting about the Cards out of all toys and games on Amazon. There
Against Humanity business model. “We make are official expansion packs available, and sev-
a product. We sell it for money. Then we spend eral official themed packs and international
less money than we make,” Max said. editions as well.

He is right. Cards Against Humanity is a But Cards Against Humanity is also avail-
simple party game, modeled after the game able for free. Anyone can download a digital
Apples to Apples. To play, one player asks a version of the game on the Cards Against Hu-
question or fill-in-the-blank statement from a manity website. More than one million people
black card, and the other players submit their have downloaded the game since the compa-
funniest white card in response. The catch is ny began tracking the numbers.
that all of the cards are filled with crude, grue-
some, and otherwise awful things. For the The game is available under an Attribu-
right kind of people (“horrible people,” accord- tion-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license (CC
ing to Cards Against Humanity advertising), BY-NC-SA). That means, in addition to copying
this makes for a hilarious and fun game. the game, anyone can create new versions of
the game as long as they make it available un-
The revenue model is simple. Physical cop- der the same noncommercial terms. The abili-
ies of the game are sold for a profit. And it ty to adapt the game is like an entire new game
works. At the time of this writing, Cards Against unto itself.

Made With Creative Commons 59

All together, these factors—the crass tone of have. In 2013, after deliberating, they decided
the game and company, the free download, the to have an Everything Costs $5 More sale.
openness to fans remixing the game—give
the game a massive cult following. “We sweated it out the night before Black
Friday, wondering if our fans were going to
Their success is not the result of a grand plan. hate us for it,” he said. “But it made us laugh
Instead, Cards Against Humanity was the last so we went with it. People totally caught the
in a long line of games and comedy projects joke.”
that Max Temkin and his friends put togeth-
er for their own amusement. As Max tells the This sort of bold transparency delights the
story, they made the game so they could play media, but more importantly, it engages their
it themselves on New Year’s Eve because they fans. “One of the most surprising things you
were too nerdy to be invited to other parties. can do in capitalism is just be honest with peo-
The game was a hit, so they decided to put it ple,” Max said. “It shocks people that there is
up online as a free PDF. People started ask- transparency about what you are doing.”
ing if they could pay to have the game printed
for them, and eventually they decided to run Max also likened it to a grand improv scene.
a Kickstarter to fund the printing. They set “If we do something a little subversive and un-
their Kickstarter goal at $4,000—and raised expected, the public wants to be a part of the
$15,000. The game was officially released in joke.” One year they did a Give Cards Against
May 2011. Humanity $5 event, where people literally paid
them five dollars for no reason. Their fans
The game caught on quickly, and it has only wanted to make the joke funnier by making it
grown more popular over time. Max says the successful. They made $70,000 in a single day.
eight founders never had a meeting where
they decided to make it an ongoing business. This remarkable trust they have in their
“It kind of just happened,” he said. customers is what inspired their decision
to apply a Creative Commons license to the
But this tale of a “happy accident” belies game. Trusting your customers to reuse and
marketing genius. Just like the game, the Cards remix your work requires a leap of faith. Cards
Against Humanity brand is irreverent and Against Humanity obviously isn’t afraid of do-
memorable. It is hard to forget a company ing the unexpected, but there are lines even
that calls the FAQ on their website “Your dumb they do not want to cross. Before applying the
questions.” license, Max said they worried that some fans
would adapt the game to include all of the jokes
Like most quality satire, however, there is they intentionally never made because they
more to the joke than vulgarity and shock val- crossed that line. “It happened, and the world
ue. The company’s marketing efforts around didn’t end,” Max said. “If that is the worst cost
Black Friday illustrate this particularly well. For of using CC, I’d pay that a hundred times over
those outside the United States, Black Friday is because there are so many benefits.”
the term for the day after the Thanksgiving hol-
iday, the biggest shopping day of the year. It is Any successful product inspires its biggest
an incredibly important day for Cards Against fans to create remixes of it, but unsanctioned
Humanity, like it is for all U.S. retailers. Max adaptations are more likely to fly under the ra-
said they struggled with what to do on Black dar. The Creative Commons license gives fans
Friday because they didn’t want to support of Cards Against Humanity the freedom to run
what he called the “orgy of consumerism” the with the game and copy, adapt, and promote
day has become, particularly since it follows a their creations openly. Today there are thou-
day that is about being grateful for what you sands of fan expansions of the game.

60 Made With Creative Commons

Max said, “CC was a no-brainer for us because CC WAS A NO-BRAINER FOR
it gets the most people involved. Making the
game free and available under a CC license led US BECAUSE IT GETS THE MOST
to the unbelievable situation where we are one
of the best-marketed games in the world, and PEOPLE INVOLVED MAKING
we have never spent a dime on marketing.”
THE GAME FREE AND AVAILABLE
Of course, there are limits to what the
company allows its customers to do with the UNDER A CC LICENSE LED TO
game. They chose the Attribution-NonCom-
mercial-ShareAlike license because it restricts THE UNBELIEVABLE SITUATION
people from using the game to make money.
It also requires that adaptations of the game WHERE WE ARE ONE OF THE
be made available under the same licensing
terms if they are shared publicly. Cards Against BEST-MARKETED GAMES IN THE
Humanity also polices its brand. “We feel like
we’re the only ones who can use our brand WORLD, AND WE HAVE NEVER
and our game and make money off of it,” Max
said. About 99.9 percent of the time, they just SPENT A DIME ON MARKETING
send an email to those making commercial use
of the game, and that is the end of it. There For all of their success, the creators of Cards
have only been a handful of instances where Against Humanity are only partially motivated
they had to get a lawyer involved. by money. Max says they have always been
interested in the Walt Disney philosophy of
Just as there is more than meets the eye to financial success. “We don’t make jokes and
the Cards Against Humanity business model, games to make money—we make money so
the same can be said of the game itself. To be we can make more jokes and games,” he said.
playable, every white card has to work syntac-
tically with enough black cards. The eight cre- In fact, the company has given more than $4
ators invest an incredible amount of work into million to various charities and causes. “Cards
creating new cards for the game. “We have is not our life plan,” Max said. “We all have
daylong arguments about commas,” Max said. other interests and hobbies. We are passion-
“The slacker tone of the cards gives people the ate about other things going on in our lives. A
impression that it is easy to write them, but it lot of the activism we have done comes out of
is actually a lot of work and quibbling.” us taking things from the rest of our lives and
channeling some of the excitement from the
That means cocreation with their fans real- game into it.”
ly doesn’t work. The company has a submis-
sion mechanism on their website, and they get Seeing money as fuel rather than the ulti-
thousands of suggestions, but it is very rare mate goal is what has enabled them to em-
that a submitted card is adopted. Instead, the brace Creative Commons licensing without
eight initial creators remain the primary au- reservation. CC licensing ended up being a
thors of expansion decks and other new prod- savvy marketing move for the company, but
ucts released by the company. Interestingly, nonetheless, giving up exclusive control of
the creativity of their customer base is really your work necessarily means giving up some
only an asset to the company once their orig- opportunities to extract more money from
inal work is created and published when peo- customers.
ple make their own adaptations of the game.

Made With Creative Commons 61

“It’s not right for everyone to release every-
thing under CC licensing,” Max said. “If your
only goal is to make a lot of money, then CC is
not best strategy. This kind of business model,
though, speaks to your values, and who you
are and why you’re making things.”

62 Made With Creative Commons

THE
CONVERSATION

The Conversation is an independent source of theconversation com
news, sourced from the academic and re-
search community and delivered direct to the Revenue model: charging content creators
public over the Internet. Founded in 2011 in (universities pay membership fees to have
Australia. their faculties serve as writers), grant funding

Interview date: February 4, 2016
Interviewee: Andrew Jaspan, founder

Profile written by Paul Stacey

Andrew Jaspan spent years as an editor of ma- with depth and substance but was concerned
jor newspapers including the Observer in Lon- about the increasing focus on the sensational
don, the Sunday Herald in Glasgow, and the Age and sexy.
in Melbourne, Australia. He experienced first-
hand the decline of newspapers, including the While at the Age, he’d become friends with
collapse of revenues, layoffs, and the constant a vice-chancellor of a university in Melbourne
pressure to reduce costs. After he left the Age who encouraged him to talk to smart people
in 2005, his concern for the future journalism across campus—an astrophysicist, a Nobel
didn’t go away. Andrew made a commitment laureate, earth scientists, economists . . . These
to come up with an alternative model. were the kind of smart people he wished were
more involved in informing the world about
Around the time he left his job as editor of the what is going on and correcting the errors that
Melbourne Age, Andrew wondered where citi- appear in media. However, they were reluctant
zens would get news grounded in fact and ev- to engage with mass media. Often, journalists
idence rather than opinion or ideology. He be- didn’t understand what they said, or unilater-
lieved there was still an appetite for journalism ally chose what aspect of a story to tell, putting
out a version that these people felt was wrong
or mischaracterized. Newspapers want to at-
tract a mass audience. Scholars want to com-

Made With Creative Commons 63

municate serious news, findings, and insights. access to independent, high-quality, informa-
It’s not a perfect match. tive journalism. The Conversation’s aim is for
people to have a better understanding of cur-
Universities are massive repositories of rent affairs and complex issues—and hope-
knowledge, research, wisdom, and expertise. fully a better quality of public discourse. The
But a lot of that stays behind a wall of their Conversation sees itself as a source of trust-
own making—there are the walled garden and ed information dedicated to the public good.
ivory tower metaphors, and in more literal Their core mission is simple: to provide read-
terms, the paywall. Broadly speaking, universi- ers with a reliable source of evidence-based
ties are part of society but disconnected from information.
it. They are an enormous public resource but
not that good at presenting their expertise to Andrew worked hard to reinvent a meth-
the wider public. odology for creating reliable, credible content.
He introduced strict new working practices, a
Andrew believed he could to help connect charter, and codes of conduct.1 These include
academics back into the public arena, and fully disclosing who every author is (with their
maybe help society find solutions to big prob- relevant expertise); who is funding their re-
lems. He thought about pairing professional search; and if there are any potential or real
editors with university and research experts, conflicts of interest. Also important is where
working one-on-one to refine everything from
story structure to headline, captions, and ACCESS TO INFORMATION IS AN
quotes. The editors could help turn something
that is academic into something understand- ISSUE OF EQUALITY—EVERYONE
able and readable. And this would be a key dif-
ference from traditional journalism—the sub- SHOULD HAVE ACCESS, LIKE
ject matter expert would get a chance to check
the article and give final approval before it is ACCESS TO CLEAN WATER
published. Compare this with reporters just
picking and choosing the quotes and writing the content originates, and even though it
whatever they want. comes from the university and research com-
munity, it still needs to be fully disclosed.
The people he spoke to liked this idea, and
Andrew embarked on raising money and sup- The Conversation does not sit behind a pay-
port with the help of the Commonwealth Sci- wall. Andrew believes access to information is
entific and Industrial Research Organisation an issue of equality—everyone should have
(CSIRO), the University of Melbourne, Monash access, like access to clean water. The Conver-
University, the University of Technology Syd- sation is committed to an open and free Inter-
ney, and the University of Western Australia. net. Everyone should have free access to their
These founding partners saw the value of an content, and be able to share it or republish it.
independent information channel that would
also showcase the talent and knowledge of the Creative Commons help with these goals;
university and research sector. With their help, articles are published with the Attribution-
in 2011, the Conversation, was launched as NoDerivs license (CC BY-ND). They’re freely
an independent news site in Australia. Every- available for others to republish elsewhere
thing published in the Conversation is openly as long as attribution is given and the con-
licensed with Creative Commons. tent is not edited. Over five years, more than
twenty-two thousand sites have republished
The Conversation is founded on the belief their content. The Conversation website gets
that underpinning a functioning democracy is about 2.9 million unique views per month,

64 Made With Creative Commons

but through republication they have thirty-five When professors from member universities
million readers. This couldn’t have been done write an article, there is some branding of the
without the Creative Commons license, and in university associated with the article. On the
Andrew’s view, Creative Commons is central to Conversation website, paying university mem-
everything the Conversation does. bers are listed as “members and funders.” Early
participants may be designated as “founding
When readers come across the Conver- members,” with seats on the editorial advisory
sation, they seem to like what they find and board.
recommend it to their friends, peers, and
networks. Readership has grown primarily Academics are not paid for their contribu-
through word of mouth. While they don’t have tions, but they get free editing from a profes-
sales and marketing, they do promote their sional (four to five hours per piece, on average).
work through social media (including Twitter They also get access to a large audience. Ev-
and Facebook), and by being an accredited ery author and member university has access
supplier to Google News. to a special analytics dashboard where they
can check the reach of an article. The metrics
It’s usual for the founders of any company to include what people are tweeting, the com-
ask themselves what kind of company it should ments, countries the readership represents,
be. It quickly became clear to the founders of where the article is being republished, and the
the Conversation that they wanted to create number of readers per article.
a public good rather than make money off of
information. Most media companies are work- The Conversation plans to expand the dash-
ing to aggregate as many eyeballs as possible board to show not just reach but impact. This
and sell ads. The Conversation founders didn’t tracks activities, behaviors, and events that
want this model. It takes no advertising and is occurred as a result of publication, including
a not-for-profit venture. things like a scholar being asked to go on a
show to discuss their piece, give a talk at a con-
There are now different editions of the ference, collaborate, submit a journal paper,
Conversation for Africa, the United King- and consult a company on a topic.
dom, France, and the United States, in addi-
tion to the one for Australia. All five editions These reach and impact metrics show the
have their own editorial mastheads, advisory benefits of membership. With the Conversa-
boards, and content. The Conversation’s glob- tion, universities can engage with the public
al virtual newsroom has roughly ninety staff and show why they’re of value.
working with thirty-five thousand academics
from over sixteen hundred universities around With its tagline, “Academic Rigor, Journalis-
the world. The Conversation would like to be tic Flair,” the Conversation represents a new
working with university scholars from even form of journalism that contributes to a more
more parts of the world. informed citizenry and improved democracy
around the world. Its open business model
Additionally, each edition has its own set and use of Creative Commons show how it’s
of founding partners, strategic partners, and possible to generate both a public good and
funders. They’ve received funding from foun- operational revenue at the same time.
dations, corporates, institutions, and individu-
al donations, but the Conversation is shifting Web link
toward paid memberships by universities and 1 theconversation.com/us/charter
research institutions to sustain operations.
This would safeguard the current service and
help improve coverage and features.

Made With Creative Commons 65

66 Made With Creative Commons

CORY
DOCTOROW

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction writer, activ- Revenue model: charging for physical copies
ist, blogger, and journalist. Based in the U.S. (book sales), pay-what-you-want, selling trans-
lation rights to books
craphound com and boingboing net

Interview date: January 12, 2016
Profile written by Sarah Hinchliff Pearson

Cory Doctorow hates the term “business mod- writes about technology, politics, and intel-
el,” and he is adamant that he is not a brand. lectual property. He has also written several
“To me, branding is the idea that you can take nonfiction books, including the most recent
a thing that has certain qualities, remove the Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free, about the
qualities, and go on selling it,” he said. “I’m ways in which creators can make a living in the
not out there trying to figure out how to be a Internet age.
brand. I’m doing this thing that animates me to
work crazy insane hours because it’s the most Cory primarily makes money by selling phys-
important thing I know how to do.” ical books, but he also takes on paid speaking
gigs and is experimenting with pay-what-you-
Cory calls himself an entrepreneur. He likes want models for his work.
to say his success came from making stuff
people happened to like and then getting out While Cory’s extensive body of fiction work
of the way of them sharing it. has a large following, he is just as well known
for his activism. He is an outspoken opponent
He is a science fiction writer, activist, blog- of restrictive copyright and digital-rights-man-
ger, and journalist. Beginning with his first nov- agement (DRM) technology used to lock up
el, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, in 2003, content because he thinks both undermine
his work has been published under a Creative creators and the public interest. He is current-
Commons license. Cory is coeditor of the pop- ly a special adviser at the Electronic Frontier
ular CC-licensed site Boing Boing, where he Foundation, where he is involved in a lawsuit

Made With Creative Commons 67

challenging the U.S. law that protects DRM. convince people they should pay him for his
Cory says his political work doesn’t directly work. “I started by not calling them thieves,”
make him money, but if he gave it up, he thinks he said.
he would lose credibility and, more important-
ly, lose the drive that propels him to create. Cory started using CC licenses soon after
“My political work is a different expression they were first created. At the time his first nov-
of the same artistic-political urge,” he said. “I el came out, he says the science fiction genre
have this suspicion that if I gave up the things was overrun with people scanning and down-
that didn’t make me money, the genuineness loading books without permission. When he
would leach out of what I do, and the quality and his publisher took a closer look at who was
that causes people to like what I do would be doing that sort of thing online, they realized it
gone.” looked a lot like book promotion. “I knew there
was a relationship between having enthusias-
Cory has been financially successful, but mon- tic readers and having a successful career as
ey is not his primary motivation. At the start a writer,” he said. “At the time, it took eighty
of his book Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free, hours to OCR a book, which is a big effort. I
he stresses how important it is not to become decided to spare them the time and energy,
an artist if your goal is to get rich. “Entering the and give them the book for free in a format
arts because you want to get rich is like buying destined to spread.”
lottery tickets because you want to get rich,”
he wrote. “It might work, but it almost certain- Cory admits the stakes were pretty low for
ly won’t. Though, of course, someone always him when he first adopted Creative Commons
wins the lottery.” He acknowledges that he is licenses. He only had to sell two thousand cop-
one of the lucky few to “make it,” but he says ies of his book to break even. People often said
he would be writing no matter what. “I am he was only able to use CC licenses success-
compelled to write,” he wrote. “Long before I fully at that time because he was just starting
wrote to keep myself fed and sheltered, I was out. Now they say he can only do it because he
writing to keep myself sane.” is an established author.

Just as money is not his primary motivation The bottom line, Cory says, is that no one
to create, money is not his primary motivation has found a way to prevent people from copy-
to share. For Cory, sharing his work with Cre- ing the stuff they like. Rather than fighting the
ative Commons is a moral imperative. “It felt tide, Cory makes his work intrinsically share-
morally right,” he said of his decision to adopt able. “Getting the hell out of the way for peo-
Creative Commons licenses. “I felt like I wasn’t ple who want to share their love of you with
contributing to the culture of surveillance and other people sounds obvious, but it’s remark-
censorship that has been created to try to stop able how many people don’t do it,” he said.
copying.” In other words, using CC licenses
symbolizes his worldview. Making his work available under Creative Com-
mons licenses enables him to view his biggest
He also feels like there is a solid commercial fans as his ambassadors. “Being open to fan
basis for licensing his work with Creative Com- activity makes you part of the conversation
mons. While he acknowledges he hasn’t been about what fans do with your work and how
able to do a controlled experiment to compare they interact with it,” he said. Cory’s own web-
the commercial benefits of licensing with CC site routinely highlights cool things his audi-
against reserving all rights, he thinks he has ence has done with his work. Unlike corpora-
sold more books using a CC license than he tions like Disney that tend to have a hands-off
would have without it. Cory says his goal is to relationship with their fan activity, he has a
symbiotic relationship with his audience. “En-

68 Made With Creative Commons

gaging with your audience can’t guarantee you “The more places your work can find itself,
success,” he said. “And Disney is an example the greater the likelihood that it will find one
of being able to remain aloof and still being of those would-be customers in some unsus-
the most successful company in the creative pected crack in the metaphorical pavement,”
industry in history. But I figure my likelihood of he wrote. “The copies that others make of my
being Disney is pretty slim, so I should take all work cost me nothing, and present the possi-
the help I can get.” bility that I’ll get something.”

His first book was published under the most Applying a CC license to his work increas-
restrictive Creative Commons license, Attribu- es the chances it will be shared more widely
tion-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND). around the Web. He avoids DRM—and open-
It allows only verbatim copying for noncom- ly opposes the practice—for similar reasons.
mercial purposes. His later work is published DRM has the effect of tying a work to a partic-
under the Attribution-NonCommercial-Share- ular platform. This digital lock, in turn, strips
Alike license (CC BY-NC-SA), which gives people the authors of control over their own work
the right to adapt his work for noncommercial and hands that control over to the platform.
purposes but only if they share it back un- He calls it Cory’s First Law: “Anytime someone
der the same license terms. Before releasing puts a lock on something that belongs to you
his work under a CC license that allows adap- and won’t give you the key, that lock isn’t there
tations, he always sells the right to translate for your benefit.”
the book to other languages to a commercial
publisher first. He wants to reach new poten- Cory operates under the premise that art-
tial buyers in other parts of the world, and he ists benefit when there are more, rather than
thinks it is more difficult to get people to pay fewer, places where people can access their
for translations if there are fan translations al- work. The Internet has opened up those ave-
ready available for free. nues, but DRM is designed to limit them. “On
the one hand, we can credibly make our work
In his book Information Doesn’t Want to Be available to a widely dispersed audience,” he
Free, Cory likens his philosophy to thinking like said. “On the other hand, the intermediaries
a dandelion. Dandelions produce thousands we historically sold to are making it harder to
of seeds each spring, and they are blown into go around them.” Cory continually looks for
the air going in every direction. The strategy is ways to reach his audience without relying
to maximize the number of blind chances the upon major platforms that will try to take con-
dandelion has for continuing its genetic line. trol over his work.
Similarly, he says there are lots of people out
there who may want to buy creative work or Cory says his e-book sales have been lower
compensate authors for it in some other way. than those of his competitors, and he attri-
butes some of that to the CC license making
GETTING THE HELL OUT OF THE the work available for free. But he believes
people are willing to pay for content they like,
WAY FOR PEOPLE WHO WANT TO even when it is available for free, as long as it is
easy to do. He was extremely successful using
SHARE THEIR LOVE OF YOU WITH Humble Bundle, a platform that allows people
to pay what they want for DRM-free versions
OTHER PEOPLE SOUNDS OBVIOUS, of a bundle of a particular creator’s work. He
is planning to try his own pay-what-you-want
BUT IT’S REMARKABLE HOW experiment soon.

MANY PEOPLE DON’T DO IT

Made With Creative Commons 69

Fans are particularly willing to pay when Cory’s realism about the difficulty of mak-
they feel personally connected to the artist. ing a living in the arts does not reflect pessi-
Cory works hard to create that personal con- mism about the Internet age. Instead, he says
nection. One way he does this is by personally the fact that it is hard to make a living as an
answering every single email he gets. “If you artist is nothing new. What is new, he writes
look at the history of artists, most die in pen- in his book, “is how many ways there are to
ury,” he said. “That reality means that for art- make things, and to get them into other peo-
ists, we have to find ways to support ourselves ple’s hands and minds.”
when public tastes shift, when copyright stops
producing. Future-proofing your artistic ca- It has never been easier to think like a dan-
reer in many ways means figuring out how delion.
to stay connected to those people who have
been touched by your work.”

70 Made With Creative Commons

FIGSHARE

Figshare is a for-profit company offering an figshare.com
online repository where researchers can pre-
serve and share the output of their research, Revenue model: platform providing paid
including figures, data sets, images, and vid- services to creators
eos. Founded in 2011 in the UK.

Interview date: January 28, 2016
Interviewee: Mark Hahnel, founder

Profile written by Paul Stacey

Figshare’s mission is to change the face of ac- search, there was no way for him to also pub-
ademic publishing through improved dissemi- lish the videos, figures, graphs, and data sets.
nation, discoverability, and reusability of schol- This was frustrating. Mark believed publishing
arly research. Figshare is a repository where his complete research would lead to more cita-
users can make all the output of their research tions and be better for his career.
available—from posters and presentations to
data sets and code—in a way that’s easy to Mark does not consider himself an ad-
discover, cite, and share. Users can upload any vanced software programmer. Fortunately,
file format, which can then be previewed in a things like cloud-based computing and wikis
Web browser. Research output is disseminat- had become mainstream, and he believed
ed in a way that the current scholarly-publish- it ought to be possible to put all his research
ing model does not allow. online and share it with anyone. So he began
working on a solution.
Figshare founder Mark Hahnel often gets
asked: How do you make money? How do we There were two key needs: licenses to make
know you’ll be here in five years? Can you, as the data citable, and persistent identifiers—
a for-profit venture, be trusted? Answers have URL links that always point back to the original
evolved over time. object ensuring the research is citable for the
long term.
Mark traces the origins of Figshare back to
when he was a graduate student getting his Mark chose Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs)
PhD in stem cell biology. His research involved to meet the need for a persistent identifier. In
working with videos of stem cells in motion. the DOI system, an object’s metadata is stored
However, when he went to publish his re- as a series of numbers in the DOI name. Refer-
ring to an object by its DOI is more stable than
referring to it by its URL, because the location
of an object (the web page or URL) can often

Made With Creative Commons 71

CHANGE THE FACE OF ACADE- Under the freemium model, academics
upload their research to Figshare for storage
MIC PUBLISHING THROUGH and sharing for free. Each research object is
licensed with Creative Commons and receives
IMPROVED DISSEMINATION, a DOI link. The premium option charges re-
searchers a fee for gigabytes of private storage
DISCOVERABILITY, AND RE- space, and for private online space designed
for a set number of research collaborators,
USABILITY OF SCHOLARLY which is ideal for larger teams and geograph-
ically dispersed research groups. Figshare
RESEARCH sums up its value proposition to researchers
as “You retain ownership. You license it. You
change. Mark partnered with DataCite for the get credit. We just make sure it persists.”
provision of DOIs for research data.
In January 2012, Figshare was launched. (The
As for licenses, Mark chose Creative Com- fig in Figshare stands for figures.) Using invest-
mons. The open-access and open-science ment funds, Mark made significant improve-
communities were already using and recom- ments to Figshare. For example, researchers
mending Creative Commons. Based on what could quickly preview their research files with-
was happening in those communities and in a browser without having to download them
Mark’s dialogue with peers, he went with CC0 first or require third-party software. Journals
(in the public domain) for data sets and CC BY who were still largely publishing articles as
(Attribution) for figures, videos, and data sets. static noninteractive PDFs became interested
in having Figshare provide that functionality
So Mark began using DOIs and Creative for them.
Commons for his own research work. He had
a science blog where he wrote about it and Figshare diversified its business model to
made all his data open. People started com- include services for journals. Figshare began
menting on his blog that they wanted to do the hosting large amounts of data for the jour-
same. So he opened it up for them to use, too. nals’ online articles. This additional data im-
proved the quality of the articles. Outsourcing
People liked the interface and simple up- this service to Figshare freed publishers from
load process. People started asking if they having to develop this functionality as part
could also share theses, grant proposals, and of their own infrastructure. Figshare-hosted
code. Inclusion of code raised new licensing data also provides a link back to the article,
issues, as Creative Commons licenses are not generating additional click-through and read-
used for software. To allow the sharing of soft- ership—a benefit to both journal publish-
ware code, Mark chose the MIT license, but ers and researchers. Figshare now provides
GNU and Apache licenses can also be used. research-data infrastructure for a wide variety
of publishers including Wiley, Springer Nature,
Mark sought investment to make this into a PLOS, and Taylor and Francis, to name a few,
scalable product. After a few unsuccessful and has convinced them to use Creative Com-
funding pitches, UK-based Digital Science ex- mons licenses for the data.
pressed interest but insisted on a more viable
business model. They made an initial invest- Governments allocate significant public funds
ment, and together they came up with a free- to research. In parallel with the launch of
mium-like business model. Figshare, governments around the world be-
gan requesting the research they fund be open

72 Made With Creative Commons

and accessible. They mandated that research- You could see which license generates the big-
ers and academic institutions better manage gest impact. If the data showed that CC BY is
and disseminate their research outputs. Insti- more impactful, Mark believes more and more
tutions looking to comply with this new man- researchers and institutions will make it their
date became interested in Figshare. Figshare license of choice.
once again diversified its business model, add-
ing services for institutions. Figshare has an Application Programming In-
terface (API) that makes it possible for data
Figshare now offers a range of fee-based to be pulled from Figshare and used in other
services to institutions, including their own applications. As an example, Mark shared a
minibranded Figshare space (called Figshare Figshare data set showing the journal subscrip-
for Institutions) that securely hosts research tions that higher-education institutions in the
data of institutions in the cloud. Services in- United Kingdom paid to ten major publishers.1
clude not just hosting but data metrics, data Figshare’s API enables that data to be pulled
dissemination, and user-group administration. into an app developed by a completely differ-
Figshare’s workflow, and the services they of- ent researcher that converts the data into a vi-
fer for institutions, take into account the needs sually interesting graph, which any viewer can
of librarians and administrators, as well as of alter by changing any of the variables.2
the researchers.
The free version of Figshare has built a com-
As with researchers and publishers, Fig- munity of academics, who through word of
share encouraged institutions to share mouth and presentations have promoted and
their research with CC BY (Attribution) and spread awareness of Figshare. To amplify and
their data with CC0 (into the public domain). reward the community, Figshare established
Funders who require researchers and insti- an Advisor program, providing those who pro-
tutions to use open licensing believe in the moted Figshare with hoodies and T-shirts, ear-
social responsibilities and benefits of making ly access to new features, and travel expenses
research accessible to all. Publishing research when they gave presentations outside of their
in this open way has come to be called open area. These Advisors also helped Mark on what
access. But not all funders specify CC BY; some license to use for software code and whether
institutions want to offer their researchers a to offer universities an option of using Creative
choice, including less permissive licenses like Commons licenses.
CC BY-NC (Attribution-NonCommercial), CC
BY-SA (Attribution-ShareAlike), or CC BY-ND Mark says his success is partly about being
(Attribution-NoDerivs). in the right place at the right time. He also be-
lieves that the diversification of Figshare’s mod-
For Mark this created a conflict. On the one el over time has been key to success. Figshare
hand, the principles and benefits of open sci- now offers a comprehensive set of services to
ence are at the heart of Figshare, and Mark researchers, publishers, and institutions.3 If he
believes CC BY is the best license for this. had relied solely on revenue from premium
On the other hand, institutions were saying subscriptions, he believes Figshare would have
they wouldn’t use Figshare unless it offered a struggled. In Figshare’s early days, their pri-
choice in licenses. He initially refused to offer mary users were early-career and late-career
anything beyond CC0 and CC BY, but after see- academics. It has only been because funders
ing an open-source CERN project offer all Cre- mandated open licensing that Figshare is now
ative Commons licenses without any negative being used by the mainstream.
repercussions, he decided to follow suit.

Mark is thinking of doing a Figshare study
that tracks research dissemination according
to Creative Commons license, and gathering
metrics on views, citations, and downloads.

Made With Creative Commons 73

Today Figshare has 26 million–plus page views,
7.5 million–plus downloads, 800,000–plus
user uploads, 2 million–plus articles, 500,000-
plus collections, and 5,000–plus projects. Sixty
percent of their traffic comes from Google. A
sister company called Altmetric tracks the use
of Figshare by others, including Wikipedia and
news sources.

Figshare uses the revenue it generates from
the premium subscribers, journal publishers,
and institutions to fund and expand what it
can offer to researchers for free. Figshare has
publicly stuck to its principles—keeping the
free service free and requiring the use of CC
BY and CC0 from the start—and from Mark’s
perspective, this is why people trust Figshare.
Mark sees new competitors coming forward
who are just in it for money. If Figshare was
only in it for the money, they wouldn’t care
about offering a free version. Figshare’s princi-
ples and advocacy for openness are a key dif-
ferentiator. Going forward, Mark sees Figshare
not only as supporting open access to research
but also enabling people to collaborate and
make new discoveries.

Web links
1 figshare.com/articles

/Journal_subscription_costs_FOIs_to_UK
_universities/1186832
2 retr0.shinyapps.io/journal_costs/?year
=2014&inst=19,22,38,42,59,64,80,95,136
3 figshare.com/features

74 Made With Creative Commons

FIGURE.NZ

Figure.NZ is a nonprofit charity that makes an figure.nz
online data platform designed to make data
reusable and easy to understand. Founded in Revenue model: platform providing paid ser-
2012 in New Zealand. vices to creators, donations, sponsorships

Interview date: May 3, 2016
Interviewee: Lillian Grace, founder

Profile written by Paul Stacey

In the paper Harnessing the Economic and So- truly accessible to all, with a specific focus on
cial Power of Data presented at the New Zea- New Zealand.
land Data Futures Forum in 2014,1 Figure.NZ
founder Lillian Grace said there are thousands Lillian had the idea for Figure.NZ in February
of valuable and relevant data sets freely avail- 2012 while working for the New Zealand In-
able to us right now, but most people don’t stitute, a think tank concerned with improv-
use them. She used to think this meant peo- ing economic prosperity, social well-being,
ple didn’t care about being informed, but she’s environmental quality, and environmental
come to see that she was wrong. Almost ev- productivity for New Zealand and New Zea-
eryone wants to be informed about issues that landers. While giving talks to community and
matter—not only to them, but also to their business groups, Lillian realized “every single
families, their communities, their businesses, issue we addressed would have been easier to
and their country. But there’s a big difference deal with if more people understood the ba-
between availability and accessibility of infor- sic facts.” But understanding the basic facts
mation. Data is spread across thousands of sometimes requires data and research that
sites and is held within databases and spread- you often have to pay for.
sheets that require both time and skill to en-
gage with. To use data when making a deci- Lillian began to imagine a website that lift-
sion, you have to know what specific question ed data up to a visual form that could be eas-
to ask, identify a source that has collected the ily understood and freely accessed. Initially
data, and manipulate complex tools to extract launched as Wiki New Zealand, the original
and visualize the information within the data idea was that people could contribute their
set. Lillian established Figure.NZ to make data

Made With Creative Commons 75

data and visuals via a wiki. However, few peo- and how they can be reused, and it does this
ple had graphs that could be used and shared, with Creative Commons licenses. As a result,
and there were no standards or consistency 98 percent of all government-agency data is
around the data and the visuals. Realizing the Creative Commons licensed, fitting in nicely
wiki model wasn’t working, Lillian brought the with Figure.NZ’s decision.
process of data aggregation, curation, and vi-
sual presentation in-house, and invested in Lillian thinks current ideas of what a business
the technology to help automate some of it. is are relatively new, only a hundred years old
Wiki New Zealand became Figure.NZ, and ef- or so. She’s convinced that twenty years from
forts were reoriented toward providing ser- now, we will see new and different models for
vices to those wanting to open their data and business. Figure.NZ is set up as a nonprofit
present it visually. charity. It is purpose-driven but also strives
to pay people well and thinks like a business.
Here’s how it works. Figure.NZ sources data Lillian sees the charity-nonprofit status as an
from other organizations, including corpo- essential element for the mission and purpose
rations, public repositories, government de- of Figure.NZ. She believes Wikipedia would
partments, and academics. Figure.NZ imports not work if it were for profit, and similarly, Fig-
and extracts that data, and then validates and ure.NZ’s nonprofit status assures people who
standardizes it—all with a strong eye on what have data and people who want to use it that
will be best for users. They then make the data they can rely on Figure.NZ’s motives. People
available in a series of standardized forms, see them as a trusted wrangler and source.
both human- and machine-readable, with
rich metadata about the sources, the licenses, Although Figure.NZ is a social enterprise
and data types. Figure.NZ has a chart-design- that openly licenses their data and graphs for
ing tool that makes simple bar, line, and area everyone to use for free, they have taken care
graphs from any data source. The graphs are not to be perceived as a free service all around
posted to the Figure.NZ website, and they can the table. Lillian believes hundreds of millions
also be exported in a variety of formats for of dollars are spent by the government and or-
print or online use. Figure.NZ makes its data ganizations to collect data. However, very little
and graphs available using the Attribution (CC money is spent on taking that data and making
BY) license. This allows others to reuse, revise, it accessible, understandable, and useful for
remix, and redistribute Figure.NZ data and decision making. Government uses some of
graphs as long as they give attribution to the the data for policy, but Lillian believes that it is
original source and to Figure.NZ. underutilized and the potential value is much
larger. Figure.NZ is focused on solving that
Lillian characterizes the initial decision to problem. They believe a portion of money allo-
use Creative Commons as naively fortunate. It cated to collecting data should go into making
was first recommended to her by a colleague. sure that data is useful and generates value. If
Lillian spent time looking at what Creative Com- the government wants citizens to understand
mons offered and thought it looked good, was why certain decisions are being made and to
clear, and made common sense. It was easy to be more aware about what the government is
use and easy for others to understand. Over doing, why not transform the data it collects
time, she’s come to realize just how fortunate into easily understood visuals? It could even
and important that decision turned out to be. become a way for a government or any orga-
New Zealand’s government has an open-ac- nization to differentiate, market, and brand
cess and licensing framework called NZGOAL, itself.
which provides guidance for agencies when
they release copyrighted and noncopyrighted
work and material.2 It aims to standardize the
licensing of works with government copyright

76 Made With Creative Commons

Figure.NZ spends a lot of time seeking to Figure.NZ also has patrons.4 Patrons donate
understand the motivations of data collectors to topic areas they care about, directly en-
and to identify the channels where it can pro- abling Figure.NZ to get data together to flesh
vide value. Every part of their business model out those areas. Patrons do not direct what
has been focused on who is going to get value data is included or excluded.
from the data and visuals.
Figure.NZ also accepts philanthropic dona-
Figure.NZ has multiple lines of business. tions, which are used to provide more content,
They provide commercial services to organi- extend technology, and improve services, or
zations that want their data publicly available are targeted to fund a specific effort or pro-
and want to use Figure.NZ as their publishing vide in-kind support. As a charity, donations
platform. People who want to publish open are tax deductible.
data appreciate Figure.NZ’s ability to do it
faster, more easily, and better than they can. Figure.NZ has morphed and grown over time.
Customers are encouraged to help their us- With data aggregation, curation, and visualiz-
ers find, use, and make things from the data ing services all in-house, Figure.NZ has devel-
they make available on Figure.NZ’s website. oped a deep expertise in taking random styles
Customers control what is released and the of data, standardizing it, and making it useful.
license terms (although Figure.NZ encourages Lillian realized that Figure.NZ could easily be-
Creative Commons licensing). Figure.NZ also come a warehouse of seventy people doing
serves customers who want a specific collec- data. But for Lillian, growth isn’t always good.
tion of charts created—for example, for their In her view, bigger often means less effective.
website or annual report. Charging the organi- Lillian set artificial constraints on growth, forc-
zations that want to make their data available ing the organization to think differently and be
enables Figure.NZ to provide their site free to more efficient. Rather than in-house growth,
all users, to truly democratize data. they are growing and building external rela-
tionships.
Lillian notes that the current state of most
data is terrible and often not well understood IN THE WORLD WE LIVE IN NOW,
by the people who have it. This sometimes
makes it difficult for customers and Figure.NZ THE BEST FUTURE IS THE ONE
to figure out what it would cost to import, stan-
dardize, and display that data in a useful way. WHERE EVERYONE CAN MAKE
To deal with this, Figure.NZ uses “high-trust
contracts,” where customers allocate a certain WELL-INFORMED DECISIONS
budget to the task that Figure.NZ is then free
to draw from, as long as Figure.NZ frequently Figure.NZ’s website displays visuals and
reports on what they’ve produced so the cus- data associated with a wide range of cate-
tomer can determine the value for money. This gories including crime, economy, education,
strategy has helped build trust and transpar- employment, energy, environment, health,
ency about the level of effort associated with information and communications technology,
doing work that has never been done before. industry, tourism, and many others. A search
function helps users find tables and graphs.
A second line of business is what Figure. Figure.NZ does not provide analysis or inter-
NZ calls partners. ASB Bank and Statistics pretation of the data or visuals. Their goal is to
New Zealand are partners who back Figure.
NZ’s efforts. As one example, with their sup-
port Figure.NZ has been able to create Busi-
ness Figures, a special way for businesses to
find useful data without having to know what
questions to ask.3

Made With Creative Commons 77

teach people how to think, not think for them. when many citizens in society couldn’t read or
Figure.NZ wants to create intuitive experienc- write. However, as a society, we’ve now come
es, not user manuals. to believe that reading and writing skills should
be something all citizens have. We haven’t yet
Figure.NZ believes data and visuals should adopted a similar belief around numbers and
be useful. They provide their customers with a data literacy. We largely still believe that only
data collection template and teach them why a few specially trained people can analyze and
it’s important and how to use it. They’ve begun think with numbers.
putting more emphasis on tracking what users
of their website want. They also get requests “Figure.NZ may be the first organization to
from social media and through email for them assert that everyone can use numbers in their
to share data for a specific topic—for example, thinking, and it’s built a technological platform
can you share data for water quality? If they along with trust and a network of relation-
have the data, they respond quickly; if they ships to make that possible. What you can see
don’t, they try and identify the organizations on Figure.NZ are tens of thousands of graphs,
that would have that data and forge a relation- maps, and data.
ship so they can be included on Figure.NZ’s
site. Overall, Figure.NZ is seeking to provide a “Figure.NZ sees this as a new kind of alpha-
place for people to be curious about, access, bet that can help people analyze what they
and interpret data on topics they are interest- see around them. A way to be thoughtful and
ed in. informed about society. A means of engaging
in conversation and shaping decision mak-
Lillian has a deep and profound vision for Fig- ing that transcends personal experience. The
ure.NZ that goes well beyond simply providing long-term value and impact is almost impos-
open-data services. She says things are differ- sible to measure, but the goal is to help citi-
ent now. “We used to live in a world where it zens gain understanding and work together in
was really hard to share information widely. more informed ways to shape the future.”
And in that world, the best future was created
by having a few great leaders who essentially Lillian sees Figure.NZ’s model as having
had access to the information and made de- global potential. But for now, their focus is
cisions on behalf of others, whether it was on completely on making Figure.NZ work in New
behalf of a country or companies. Zealand and to get the “network effect”—
users dramatically increasing value for them-
“But now we live in a world where it’s real- selves and for others through use of their ser-
ly easy to share information widely and also vice. Creative Commons is core to making the
to communicate widely. In the world we live in network effect possible.
now, the best future is the one where every-
one can make well-informed decisions. Web links
1 www.nzdatafutures.org.nz/sites/default
“The use of numbers and data as a way of
making well-informed decisions is one of the /files/NZDFF_harness-the-power.pdf
areas where there is the biggest gaps. We don’t 2 www.ict.govt.nz/guidance-and-resources
really use numbers as a part of our thinking
and part of our understanding yet. /open-government/new-zealand
-government-open-access-and
“Part of the reason is the way data is spread -licensing-nzgoal-framework/
across hundreds of sites. In addition, for the 3 figure.nz/business/
most part, deep thinking based on data is 4 figure.nz/patrons/
constrained to experts because most people
don’t have data literacy. There once was a time

78 Made With Creative Commons

KNOWLEDGE
UNLATCHED

Knowledge Unlatched is a not-for-profit com- knowledgeunlatched org
munity interest company that brings libraries Revenue model: crowdfunding (specialized)
together to pool funds to publish open-access
books. Founded in 2012 in the UK.

Interview date: February 26, 2016
Interviewee: Frances Pinter, founder

Profile written by Paul Stacey

The serial entrepreneur Dr.  Frances Pinter Commercial Innovation Award for Innovation
has been at the forefront of innovation in the in Education in 2015.
publishing industry for nearly forty years. She
founded the UK-based Knowledge Unlatched Dr.  Pinter has been in academic publishing
with a mission to enable open access to schol- most of her career. About ten years ago, she
arly books. For Frances, the current scholarly- became acquainted with the Creative Com-
book-publishing system is not working for any- mons founder Lawrence Lessig and got inter-
one, and especially not for monographs in the ested in Creative Commons as a tool for both
humanities and social sciences. Knowledge Un- protecting content online and distributing it
latched is committed to changing this and has free to users.
been working with libraries to create a sustain-
able alternative model for publishing scholarly Not long after, she ran a project in Africa
books, sharing the cost of making monographs convincing publishers in Uganda and South
(released under a Creative Commons license) Africa to put some of their content online for
and savings costs over the long term. Since free using a Creative Commons license and to
its launch, Knowledge Unlatched has received see what happened to print sales. Sales went
several awards, including the IFLA/Brill Open up, not down.
Access award in 2014 and a Curtin University

Made With Creative Commons 79

In 2008, Bloomsbury Academic, a new im- with an open-access version of the books re-
print of Bloomsbury Publishing in the United leased under a Creative Commons license.
Kingdom, appointed her its founding publish-
er in London. As part of the launch, Frances This idea really took hold in her mind. She
convinced Bloomsbury to differentiate them- didn’t really have a name for it but began
selves by putting out monographs for free on- talking about it and making presentations to
line under a Creative Commons license (BY-NC see if there was interest. The more she talked
or BY-NC-ND, i.e., Attribution-NonCommercial about it, the more people agreed it had appeal.
or Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs). She offered a bottle of champagne to anyone
This was seen as risky, as the biggest cost for who could come up with a good name for the
publishers is getting a book to the stage where idea. Her husband came up with Knowledge
it can be printed. If everyone read the online Unlatched, and after two years of generating
book for free, there would be no print-book interest, she decided to move forward and
sales at all, and the costs associated with get- launch a community interest company (a UK
ting the book to print would be lost. Surpris- term for not-for-profit social enterprises) in
ingly, Bloomsbury found that sales of the print 2012.
versions of these books were 10 to 20 percent
higher than normal. Frances found it intrigu- She describes the business model in a paper
ing that the Creative Commons–licensed free called Knowledge Unlatched: Toward an Open
online book acts as a marketing vehicle for the and Networked Future for Academic Publishing:
print format.
1 Publishers offer titles for sale reflecting
Frances began to look at customer interest origination costs only via Knowledge Un-
in the three forms of the book: 1) the Creative latched.
Commons–licensed free online book in PDF
form, 2) the printed book, and 3) a digital ver- 2 Individual libraries select titles either as in-
sion of the book on an aggregator platform dividual titles or as collections (as they do
with enhanced features. She thought of this as from library suppliers now).
the “ice cream model”: the free PDF was vanilla
ice cream, the printed book was an ice cream 3 Their selections are sent to Knowledge
cone, and the enhanced e-book was an ice Unlatched specifying the titles to be pur-
cream sundae. chased at the stated price(s).

After a while, Frances had an epiphany— 4 The price, called a Title Fee (set by publish-
what if there was a way to get libraries to un- ers and negotiated by Knowledge Un-
derwrite the costs of making these books up latched), is paid to publishers to cover the
until they’re ready be printed, in other words, fixed costs of publishing each of the titles
cover the fixed costs of getting to the first digi- that were selected by a minimum number
tal copy? Then you could either bring down the of libraries to cover the Title Fee.
cost of the printed book, or do a whole bunch
of interesting things with the printed book and 5 Publishers make the selected titles avail-
e-book—the ice cream cone or sundae part of able Open Access (on a Creative Commons
the model. or similar open license) and are then paid
the Title Fee which is the total collected
This idea is similar to the article-processing from the libraries.
charge some open-access journals charge re-
searchers to cover publishing costs. Frances
began to imagine a coalition of libraries pay-
ing for the prepress costs—a “book-processing
charge”—and providing everyone in the world

80 Made With Creative Commons

6 Publishers make print copies, e-Pub, and ferings. Books were being bundled into eight
other digital versions of selected titles small packages separated by subject (including
available to member libraries at a discount Anthropology, History, Literature, Media and
that reflects their contribution to the Title Communications, and Politics), of around ten
Fee and incentivizes membership.1 books per package. Three hundred libraries
around the world have to commit to at least
The first round of this model resulted in a six of the eight packages to enable unlatching.
collection of twenty-eight current titles from The average cost per book was just under fifty
thirteen recognized scholarly publishers being dollars. The unlatching process took roughly
unlatched. The target was to have two hun- ten months. It started with a call to publish-
dred libraries participate. The cost of the pack- ers for titles, followed by having a library task
age per library was capped at $1,680, which force select the titles, getting authors’ permis-
was an average price of sixty dollars per book, sions, getting the libraries to pledge, billing the
but in the end they had nearly three hundred libraries, and finally, unlatching.
libraries sharing the costs, and the price per
book came in at just under forty-three dollars. The longest part of the whole process is get-
ting libraries to pledge and commit funds. It
The open-access, Creative Commons ver- takes about five months, as library buy-in has
sions of these twenty-eight books are still to fit within acquisition cycles, budget cycles,
available online.4 Most books have been li- and library-committee meetings.
censed with CC BY-NC or CC BY-NC-ND. Au-
thors are the copyright holder, not the publish- Knowledge Unlatched informs and recruits
er, and negotiate choice of license as part of libraries through social media, mailing lists,
the publishing agreement. Frances has found listservs, and library associations. Of the three
that most authors want to retain control over hundred libraries that participated in the first
the commercial and remix use of their work. round, 80 percent are also participating in the
Publishers list the book in their catalogs, and second round, and there are an additional
the noncommercial restriction in the Creative eighty new libraries taking part. Knowledge
Commons license ensures authors continue to Unlatched is also working not just with individ-
get royalties on sales of physical copies. ual libraries but also library consortia, which
has been getting even more libraries involved.
There are three cost variables to consider
for each round: the overall cost incurred by Knowledge Unlatched is scaling up, offering
the publishers, total cost for each library to 150 new titles in the second half of 2016. It will
acquire all the books, and the individual price also offer backlist titles, and in 2017 will start
per book. The fee publishers charge for each to make journals open access too.
title is a fixed charge, and Knowledge Un-
latched calculates the total amount for all the Knowledge Unlatched deliberately chose
books being unlatched at a time. The cost of monographs as the initial type of book to un-
an order for each library is capped at a maxi- latch. Monographs are foundational and im-
mum based on a minimum number of libraries portant, but also problematic to keep going in
participating. If the number of participating li- the standard closed publishing model.
braries exceeds the minimum, then the cost of
the order and the price per book go down for The cost for the publisher to get to a first dig-
each library. ital copy of a monograph is $5,000 to $50,000.
A good one costs in the $10,000 to $15,000
The second round, recently completed, un- range. Monographs typically don’t sell a lot of
latched seventy-eight books from twenty-six
publishers. For this round, Frances was ex-
perimenting with the size and shape of the of-

Made With Creative Commons 81

copies. A publisher who in the past sold three of their money should be spent to support
thousand copies now typically sells only three open access. “Free ride” is more like commu-
hundred. That makes unlatching monographs nity responsibility. By the end of March 2016,
a low risk for publishers. For the first round, the round-one books had been downloaded
it took five months to get thirteen publishers. nearly eighty thousand times in 175 countries.
For the second round, it took one month to get
twenty-six. For publishers, authors, and librarians, the
Knowledge Unlatched model for monographs
Authors don’t generally make a lot of roy- is a win-win-win.
alties from monographs. Royalties range from
zero dollars to 5 to 10 percent of receipts. The In the first round, Knowledge Unlatched’s over-
value to the author is the awareness it brings heads were covered by grants. In the second
to them; when their book is being read, it in- round, they aim to demonstrate the model is
creases their reputation. Open access through sustainable. Libraries and publishers will each
unlatching generates many more downloads pay a 7.5 percent service charge that will go
and therefore awareness. (On the Knowledge toward Knowledge Unlatched’s running costs.
Unlatched website, you can find interviews With plans to scale up in future rounds, Fran-
with the twenty-eight round-one authors de- ces figures they can fully recover costs when
scribing their experience and the benefits of they are unlatching two hundred books at a
taking part.)5 time. Moving forward, Knowledge Unlatched
is making investments in technology and pro-
Library budgets are constantly being cesses. Future plans include unlatching jour-
squeezed, partly due to the inflation of journal nals and older books.
subscriptions. But even without budget con-
straints, academic libraries are moving away Frances believes that Knowledge Unlatched
from buying physical copies. An academic li- is tapping into new ways of valuing academ-
brary catalog entry is typically a URL to wher- ic content. It’s about considering how many
ever the book is hosted. Or if they have enough people can find, access, and use your content
electronic storage space, they may download without pay barriers. Knowledge Unlatched
the digital file into their digital repository. Only taps into the new possibilities and behaviors of
secondarily do they consider getting a print the digital world. In the Knowledge Unlatched
book, and if they do, they buy it separately model, the content-creation process is exactly
from the digital version. the same as it always has been, but the eco-
nomics are different. For Frances, Knowledge
Knowledge Unlatched offers libraries a Unlatched is connected to the past but moving
compelling economic argument. Many of the into the future, an evolution rather than a rev-
participating libraries would have bought a olution.
copy of the monograph anyway, but instead of
paying $95 for a print copy or $150 for a digital Web links
multiple-use copy, they pay $50 to unlatch. It 1 www.pinter.org.uk/pdfs/Toward_an
costs them less, and it opens the book to not
just the participating libraries, but to the world. _Open.pdf
2 www.oapen.org
Not only do the economics make sense, 3 www.hathitrust.org
but there is very strong alignment with library 4 collections.knowledgeunlatched.org
mandates. The participating libraries pay less
than they would have in the closed model, and /collection-availability-1/
the open-access book is available to all librar- 5 www.knowledgeunlatched.org
ies. While this means nonparticipating librar-
ies could be seen as free riders, in the library /featured-authors-section/
world, wealthy libraries are used to paying
more than poor libraries and accept that part

82 Made With Creative Commons

LUMEN
LEARNING

Lumen Learning is a for-profit company help- lumenlearning com
ing educational institutions use open educa-
tional resources (OER). Founded in 2013 in Revenue model: charging for custom ser-
the U.S. vices, grant funding

Interview date: December 21, 2015
Interviewees: David Wiley and Kim Thanos, cofounders

Profile written by Paul Stacey

Cofounded by open education visionary Dr.  After a second round of funding, a total of
David Wiley and education-technology strat- more than twenty-five institutions participat-
egist Kim Thanos, Lumen Learning is dedi- ed in and benefited from this project. It was
cated to improving student success, bringing career changing for David and Kim to see the
new ideas to pedagogy, and making educa- impact this initiative had on low-income stu-
tion more affordable by facilitating adoption dents. David and Kim sought further funding
of open educational resources. In 2012, David from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,
and Kim partnered on a grant-funded project who asked them to define a plan to scale their
called the Kaleidoscope Open Course Initia- work in a financially sustainable way. That is
tive.1 It involved a set of fully open general-ed- when they decided to create Lumen Learning.
ucation courses across eight colleges predom-
inantly serving at-risk students, with goals to David and Kim went back and forth on
dramatically reduce textbook costs and collab- whether it should be a nonprofit or for-
orate to improve the courses to help students profit. A nonprofit would make it a more com-
succeed. David and Kim exceeded those goals: fortable fit with the education sector but meant
the cost of the required textbooks, replaced they’d be constantly fund-raising and seeking
with OER, decreased to zero dollars, and aver- grants from philanthropies. Also, grants usual-
age student-success rates improved by 5 to 10 ly require money to be used in certain ways for
percent when compared with previous years. specific deliverables. If you learn things along
the way that change how you think the grant

Made With Creative Commons 83

money should be used, there often isn’t a lot • measure improvements in student success
of flexibility to do so. with metrics like passing rates, persistence,
and course completion; and
But as a for-profit, they’d have to convince
educational institutions to pay for what Lumen • collaborate with faculty to make ongoing
had to offer. On the positive side, they’d have improvements to OER based on student
more control over what to do with the revenue success research.
and investment money; they could make deci-
sions to invest the funds or use them different- Lumen has developed a suite of open, Cre-
ly based on the situation and shifting oppor- ative Commons–licensed courseware in more
tunities. In the end, they chose the for-profit than sixty-five subjects. All courses are freely
status, with its different model for and ap- and publicly available right off their website.
proach to sustainability. They can be copied and used by others as long
as they provide attribution to Lumen Learning
Right from the start, David and Kim posi- following the terms of the Creative Commons
tioned Lumen Learning as a way to help insti- license.
tutions engage in open educational resourc-
es, or OER. OER are teaching, learning, and Then there are three types of bundled
research materials, in all different media, that services that cost money. One option, which
reside in the public domain or are released un- Lumen calls Candela courseware, offers inte-
der an open license that permits free use and gration with the institution’s learning-manage-
repurposing by others. ment system, technical and pedagogical sup-
port, and tracking of effectiveness. Candela
Originally, Lumen did custom contracts for courseware costs institutions ten dollars per
each institution. This was complicated and enrolled student.
challenging to manage. However, through
that process patterns emerged which al- A second option is Waymaker, which offers
lowed them to generalize a set of approaches the services of Candela but adds personalized
and offerings. Today they don’t customize as learning technologies, such as study plans,
much as they used to, and instead they tend automated messages, and assessments, and
to work with customers who can use their helps instructors find and support the stu-
off-the-shelf options. Lumen finds that insti- dents who need it most. Waymaker courses
tutions and faculty are generally very good at cost twenty-five dollars per enrolled student.
seeing the value Lumen brings and are willing
to pay for it. Serving disadvantaged learner The third and emerging line of business for
populations has led Lumen to be very prag- Lumen is providing guidance and support for
matic; they describe what they offer in quan- institutions and state systems that are pursu-
titative terms—with facts and figures—and ing the development of complete OER degrees.
in a way that is very student-focused. Lumen Often called Z-Degrees, these programs elimi-
Learning helps colleges and universities— nate textbook costs for students in all courses
that make up the degree (both required and
• replace expensive textbooks in high-enroll- elective) by replacing commercial textbooks
ment courses with OER; and other expensive resources with OER.

• provide enrolled students day one access Lumen generates revenue by charging for
to Lumen’s fully customizable OER course their value-added tools and services on top of
materials through the institution’s learn- their free courses, just as solar-power compa-
ing-management system; nies provide the tools and services that help
people use a free resource—sunlight. And Lu-
men’s business model focuses on getting the
institutions to pay, not the students. With proj-
ects they did prior to Lumen, David and Kim

84 Made With Creative Commons