Puerto Rico Launches Localized Creative Commons Licenses
About CCSan Francisco, California and San Juan, Puerto Rico — February 22, 2008
Today in San Juan, the University of Puerto Rico Cyberlaw Clinic will host the launch of localized Creative Commons licenses, marking the forty-fourth jurisdiction worldwide to port the Creative Commons licensing suite. The event will be held at 7:00pm at U.P.R.’s School of Law, featuring an exhibition by Puerto Rican artists, a promotional CD release, and keynote by Creative Commons Chairman Joichi Ito.
The Creative Commons Puerto Rico team is lead by Hiram A. Meléndez-Juarbe, Carlos González-Yanes, and Chloé Georas, who coordinated the porting process and public consultation with local and international legal experts. In preparation for the public discussion, a memorandum was prepared by the 2006-2007 class of the University of Puerto Cyberlaw Clinic to analyze the role of moral rights in Puerto Rico‘s mixed legal tradition. The memorandum is available for download: https://creativecommons.org
“The Cyberlaw Clinic’s commitment to ‘free culture’ has provided the ideal context for the development of the Creative Commons Puerto Rico (CCPR) project,” notes María L. Jiménez, Director of U.P.R.’s Legal Aid Clinic. “The university has a longstanding tradition as an innovative institution in many legal fields and is deeply committed to the advancement of important social values such as the ones embraced by the Creative Commons project.”
The CCPR Project Leads add that they are “fully aware the importance of a rich and culturally diverse public domain for a vigorous democratic society and of the many ways in which cultural growth is stifled by a combination of technology, copyright law and practice, and the entertainment industry’s hold on the creation and dissemination of cultural products.” They confirm that “CCPR understands what is at stake and is, thus, very serious about consistently following up on the essential community building and internationalizing dimension of this enterprise.”
One of the major assets to the CCPR licenses is the avoidance of unnecessary legal obstacles to creative exchanges. As Rolando Silva, photographer, graphic artist and professor, confirms, “Creative Commons licenses are a neat alternative to the categorical copyright. We were in dire need of more flexible possibilities within copyright laws that permit the dissemination of artistic work without the fear of lawsuits or any such foolishness.”
About the University of Puerto Rico School of Law
Founded in 1913, the University of Puerto Rico School of Law is the oldest of its kind in Puerto Rico. The School of Law has been accredited by the American Bar Association since 1945, has been a member of the American Association of Law Schools since 1944 and is the only public law school in Puerto Rico.
The Cyberlaw Clinic of the U.P.R. School of Law promotes principles of liberty and freedom of expression on the internet as well as the development of a technological and legal context that encourages individual and collective creativity. For more information, visit http://cyberclinicpr.org/.
About Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a not-for-profit organization, founded in 2001, that promotes the creative re-use of intellectual and artistic works, whether owned or in the public domain. Through its free copyright licenses, Creative Commons offers authors, artists, scientists, and educators the choice of a flexible range of protections and freedoms that build upon the “all rights reserved” concept of traditional copyright to enable a voluntary “some rights reserved” approach. Creative Commons was built with and is sustained by the generous support of organizations including the Center for the Public Domain, the Omidyar Network, The Rockefeller Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, as well as members of the public. For more information about Creative Commons, visit https://creativecommons.org.
Contact
Dr. Catharina Maracke
Director
Creative Commons International, Creative Commons
catharina [at] creativecommons [dot] org
Press Kit
https://creativecommons.org
https://creativecommons.org