Is there a way to sell my decks for a fee?

hi guys, can i legally sell my decks for a fee? I would appreciate it if anyone could help me out on this matter.

You can certainly offer your self-made decks for download behind a paywall of your choice.

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The cards you create with Anki are your own, so you are free to license them as you please, and sell them if you wish. Anki does not include any DRM features to prevent users from sharing decks, as its open-source nature means any such protections could be bypassed easily. If your decks turn up on the Internet in violation of your copyright, you are of course free to send takedown notices. If you find your copyrighted content has been uploaded on AnkiWeb’s list of shared decks, please let us know and we will remove it as soon as possible.
Can I use Anki in a company or school? - Frequently Asked Questions

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ok but how can i prevent buyers from sharing my decks with others :frowning:

Thank you very much for taking the time to write, can we add the DRM feature to my decks? If we can, is it legal?

From a technical site, there is nothing realistic you can do to prevent sharing of your decks or their content.

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Maybe we could develop a plugin which makes password on the decks.
but it can also be changed later on.

For an example of this, the Spoonfed Chinese deck is sold for a fee, (there are some questions about the copyright with that deck, but as long as you own the copyright for the deck you are selling it should be fine). If it ends up getting shared on AnkiWeb you can probably ask for it to be taken down, but beyond that it’s hard to prevent it being shared.

That said, it does seem like plenty of people have paid for the Spoonfed Chinese deck, so if there’s demand I think you’d get some sales. Make sure it’s high quality, up to date, accurately described, and perhaps upload a sample of 10% of the deck or so to AnkiWeb so people can try it out first.

@shahin Among other things, this would have to prevent the decks from being used on mobile, which would be a huge turnoff for a lot of people.

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Very sad question. Anki and ankidroid are open-source; people have spent so many hours to get that working and you’re trying to get money out of that. That’s not the spirit of Anki. I know I am not answering the question but that kind of questions always shocks me

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I agree.

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There is nothing wrong with selling decks in my opinion.
The fact that Anki and AnkiDroid are free and open-source doesn’t mean content created using them can’t be monetized or that it’s wrong (in any sense of the word) to do so. The deck creator holds the copyright in the end, and the FAQ page Casartelli had linked recognizes that.

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I have no problem to pay for high-quality (!!) decks with original content.

As others have said, there’s no legal problem with selling decks that you have copyright for. However, you have to make it clear that you’re not selling Anki itself, which shouldn’t be an issue.

When it comes to whether this is “in the spirit of Anki”, I think it’s completely fine. Paying for a deck means the creator gets something back for all the time they’ve spent on their work. It also means they can spend more time further improving it. I have happily paid for most of the decks I use and it’s been very worth it.

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Is there a source for paid decks? I never encountered one.

Anki does not provide an out-of-the-box marketplace, so you have to provide the deck to the user by yourself. This is because it is hard to enforce DRM (actually, it’s impossible to enforce it completely), and Anki’s vocation is not to launch deck-creating start-ups.
That said, there are self hosted Anki-related product selling sites (anki palace, just to mention one).

I have the impression that this is very controversial. Some people think it’s fine (generally) to financially remunerate content creators whose work is largely based on FOSS software, some people believe in free (both as in free beer and free speech) software / knowledge. IMO this is because some “working environment” are more prone to making you believe it’s ok to spend money to get the most basic stuff (Apple, I’m looking at you), whereas others (such as GNU based OSs) make it virtually impossible to spend money.

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To elaborate a little bit my previous post, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with selling decks, and as others others have pointed out, the FAQ clearly states that this is perfectly possible.

However, I personally still feel that’s not the spirit of Anki (or any other similar project), and I don’t see DRM support being implemented in the future, not only for technical reasons.

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Regarding the ethics of selling decks, I personally don’t have a problem with it. I don’t think the sale of decks affects how any of us use Anki, and particularly for decks that take a lot of effort to put together, use copyrighted content, or require regular updates, those decks might not exist without the creator taking a fee for them.

Furthermore, I’d much rather people sell those decks packaged for Anki than on another platform where DRM (or just poor quality software) makes for a worse experience, such as leaving users unable to customise the decks. Sellers will have to accept that decks might be shared, changed, or otherwise used without restriction, which seems to be well within the spirit of FOSS to me.

A market where sellers can make a return without the use of DRM etc is a much better place to be than without one or both of those things. Free doesn’t mean without cost when it comes to software, and commercial embrace of FOSS is a good thing IMO, purity be dammed.

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Anki was made for single use. Who doesn’t want to do it, but still wants to use Anki, nothing fairer than paying for the work and time spent to make the cards.