One thing that often surprises me is the fascination with big numbers. I think I first noticed this when I began working with Creative Commons and reporters wanted to have numbers: in particular they wanted to know how many “things” were licensed under a Creative Commons license. For several years I answered “more than 50 million” copyrightable items were licensed and the reporters were happy – they had a big quote. Actually 50 million is nothing, peanuts and it’s also irrelevant.

Big numbers are of no practical use. They are mental popcorn, in the end unfulfilling.

That’s why I was happy to see that CC launched a case study wiki some time ago:

The Case Study Wiki chronicles past, present and future success stories of CC. The goal is to create a community-powered system for qualitatively measuring the impact of Creative Commons around the world. All are encouraged to add interesting, innovative, or noteworthy uses of Creative Commons licenses.

Simply the list of CC licensed books made bookmarking the site worthwile. Like all book browsing I ended downloading:

Philipp Lenssen 55 ways to have fun with google

Christian Siefkes From Exchange to Contributions

Marleen Wynants & Jan Cornelis (eds) How Open is the Future? Economic, Social & Cultural Scenarios
inspired by Free & Open-Source Software

Gustavo Cardoso The Media in the Network Society

It’s free and gratis: What’s not to like?