The Best Creative Commons License for the Solidarity Economy

Since their launch in 2001, the Creative Commons (CC) licenses have become very popular. Of course, they have also caused considerable confusion. Their purpose is to provide exemptions from existing copyright law, to give the general public rights to reuse, remix, or reinvent one’s “content” (an annoying word, but a frequently used one).

Let’s start with a quick review of the seven main licenses, listed from least restrictive to most restrictive.

• Zero (CC0), the equivalent of public domain: no rights reserved at all.
• Attribution (CC BY): You must acknowledge the original creator.
• Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA): You must acknowledge the original creator, and you must release the derived work under the same license, CC BY-SA.
• Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC): You must acknowledge the original creator, and you cannot use the derived work for commercial purposes.
• Attribution-ShareAlike-NonCommercial (CC BY-SA-NC): You must acknowledge the original creator, you must license the derived work under the same license, and you cannot use it for commercial purposes.
• Attribution-NoDerivatives (CC BY-ND): You must acknowledge the original creator, and you cannot alter the work in any way. You can only pass it along intact.
• Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-ND-NC): You must acknowledge the original creator, you cannot make commercial use of the work, and you cannot alter it.

I want to look at these from the perspective of building the knowledge commons. After all, these are called Creative Commons licenses for a reason. A commons is a pool of resources shared by a well-defined group of people, who typically make a living from it, or benefit from it in some other way. A physical commons—a forest, a fishing area, an irrigation system, grazing lands, etc.—has specific boundaries. But, a commons is not a place. It’s a set of behaviors. We manage the resource in common, as commoners. (For lots more information on historical commons, look up David Bollier, Silke Helfrich, Peter Linebaugh, and, especially, Elinor Ostrom.)

A knowledge commons is not geographic, but is still defined by the behaviors of those who contribute to it and benefit from it. Creative Commons licenses coordinate these behaviors in ways that are well understood.

Or at least, that’s the idea. The fact that there are seven different CC licenses (not counting the ones that have been retired, like the ones that don’t include Attribution) does not help people to understand them. “NoDerivatives” is pretty obvious: you can’t make any changes. All you can do is pass the work along to others, which means it’s not a very interesting or useful license. You could already pass along someone else’s work without it.

“NonCommercial” is much more contentious. The exact meaning of “commercial” remains elusive, after 25 years of debate. It’s not the for-profit or non-profit status of the reusing entity, but rather, the intent of the use itself… but even then, the dividing line between commercial use and non-commercial use remains hazy. In most cases, people play it safe, and avoid reusing NonCommercial-licensed material.

And this is the reason the knowledge commons has not grown more than it has. Too many people are either explictly or implicitly prevented from reusing and remixing content, which defeats the purpose of Creative Commons licensing.

To be very clear, the reason to avoid using the NonCommercial clause is not its ambiguity. The reason is that we should actively want people to reuse our content for commercial purposes. A commons exists to help people achieve their own ends, up to and including making a living (or at least trying). That’s the economy part of the solidarity economy. Capitalism says that we exist in competition with each other, and that I can only succeed by excluding you. But solidarity economics says that your success is an integral part of my success, even when we’re separated by space and time. When we build the commons, we build up the commoners.

But… what if some big, nasty corporation comes along and wants to reuse our content? Wouldn’t that be a setback for the solidarity economy? That’s where ShareAlike comes in. ShareAlike says that if you use this content, you also have to use the same license, and make your derived work available for others to reuse. In other words, if you benefit from the knowledge commons, you have to contribute back to it. That’s how we build.

A corporation isn’t going to reuse your content because they like your message and want to help you spread it. It does it to make money. A central part of making money is ensuring that it has exclusive control over its “intellectual property,” because that’s a competitive advantage. But, under CC BY-SA, not only can they not put your work under their control, but they’d have to surrender control of their own work by putting it under a ShareAlike license. It would not be their exclusive “intellectual property,” and they’d lose their competitive advantage. So, while they have every right to reuse your content, they have absolutely no motivation to do so. They would happily take from the commons, but not if it means giving back.

So, if we want to expand the solidarity economy by building the knowledge commons, the best license to use is CC BY-SA.