After introducing the CC Italy Chapter to you in July, the CC Netherlands Chapter in August, CC Bangladesh Chapter in September, CC Tanzania Chapter in October, and the CC India Chapter in November, we are now traveling to Latin America to introduce the CC Mexico Chapter! 

The Creative Commons Global Network (CCGN) consists of 46 CC Country Chapters spread across the globe. They’re the home for a community of advocates, activists, educators, artists, lawyers, and users who share CC’s vision and values. They implement and strengthen open access policies, copyright reform, open education, and open culture in the communities in which they live.

To help showcase their work, we’re excited to continue our blog series and social media initiative: CC Network Fridays. At least one Friday a month, we’re traveling around the world through our blog and on Twitter (using #CCNetworkFridays) to a different CC Chapter, introducing their teams, discussing their work, and celebrating their commitment to open! 

Say hello to CC Mexico!

The CC Mexico Chapter was formed in 2018. Check out this video by CC Mexico featuring original music, “La cumbia de los comunes” (“The commons cumbia”) published under CC BY-SA. Its Chapter Lead is Ivan Martinez and its representative to the CC Global Network Council is Irene Soria. They are a group of activists, artists, musicians, academics, political scientists, hackers, editors, and lawyers who have fought battles in favor of free culture for many years, and who gathered to bring CC Mexico back to life in 2018.  For this post, we spoke to Irene who told us a bit more about the Chapter’s work. She responded in both English and Spanish! 

A few members of CC Mexico’s team!

CC México: Somos un grupo de personas activistas, artistas, músicas, académicas, científicas sociales, hackers y personas abogadas, que hemos enfrentado batallas a favor de la Cultura Libre en México durante varios años. Nos juntamos en julio del 2018 para traer a la vida un nuevo y mejorado capítulo de Creative Commons México. Por cierto, ¿ya viste nuestro video?, tiene música original, “La cumbia de los comunes.”

CC: What open movement work is your Chapter actively involved in? What would you like to achieve with your work?

CC Mexico: We are actually working on three topics mainly: 

• Advocating for CC licenses through talks, workshops and discussion groups; 
• Joining coalitions defending the Internet and opposing recent local unfair and disproportional copyright reforms, by taking part or leading talks and forums about their negative impact on education and authors; 
• Changing the way big players in Mexico relate to copyright, especially regarding Open Education and Open GLAM.

We urgently advocate for the need for access to educational and cultural materials in the Mexican context. We are contributing to changes in public institutions, such as the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the Secretariat of Culture in Mexico City. Both of these institutions adopted CC licenses in a massive way thanks to our advice. We want to encourage more institutions—particularly those funded by public means—to adopt CC licensing and change their ways of managing copyright. We want to improve Mexican copyright law and promote a better environment for creativity, freedom, free licenses, and public domain. (We have even linked to support from Creative Commons when exposing these topics to the Mexican Senate).

CC México: En el capítulo CC hemos trabajado en el uso de licencias CC en la UNAM, la universidad más grande de Latinoamérica, de igual forma, hemos ofrecido múltiples charlas en diferentes espacios para hablar de la reforma de la ley de derechos de autor en México y cómo eso nos afecta. También hemos realizado vínculos con CC Global para hablar de estos temas en el Senado de la República. También formamos parte de coaliciones como Salvemos Internet y Ni censura ni candados, que buscan oponerse a modificaciones en la ley que vulneran los derechos digitales en México.

CC: What exciting project has your Chapter engaged in recently?

CC Mexico: We were just awarded a Creative Commons grant to develop a publication on author’s rights and proportional copyright from a regional point-of-view. Spoiler alert: gender, remixing, and traditional knowledge is involved!

UNAM (Mexico’s National University) has officially adopted CC licensing at their repositories—and we provided advisory for this process. This is the BIGGEST university in Latin America! Cool isn’t it?

We are supporting the Mexico-based @ultracinema_mx festival’s CC-licenced films category. This is a beautiful community of authors resampling, reusing, archiving, cataloguing, tracking and producing films in Latin America. 

CC México: Hemos ganado el gran de CC global para realizar una publicación acerca del derecho de autor proporcional y hablar desde diferentes voces, como una forma de entender la propiedad intelectual. También, le hemos dado seguimiento a la implementación de las licencias CC en la UNAM e hicimos vínculos con el festival de Cine de Reapropiación, Ultra Cinema, y desde el año próximo, tendrán una categoría de premiación exclusiva de obras que tengan licenciamiento CC.

CC: What do you find inspiring and rewarding about your work in the open movement?

CC Mexico: Contact with people and communities such as artists, filmmakers, librarians, archivists, NGOs and others looking for our advice is both inspiring and rewarding. Knowing that artists, some even supported by Mexican government grants, have chosen CC licensing is pretty inspiring.

CC México: El contacto que hemos tenido con la gente y algunas comunidades, sentir que algunos espacios de artistas y cineastas nos buscan para saber más del tema, o que nos comparten su trabajo, es muy gratificante. También saber que hay artistas CC que apoyan el movimiento y han sido apoyados con becas de fomento a la creación.

CC: What are your plans for the future? 

CC Mexico: We would like to build a bigger team, a volunteer network and CC workgroups throughout the country; especially among communities not commonly included at the Creative Commons mission.

CC México: Nos gustaría construir un equipo más grande; armar y coordinar un grupo de voluntarios a lo largo de todo el país, especialmente entre comunidades que no siempre han sido incluídas en las comunidades internacionales de Creative Commons.

CC: What projects in your country are using CC licenses that you’d like to highlight? (Please provide their Twitter handles if you have them.)

CC Mexico: Projects opting-in CC licencing in Mexico are quite diverse:

• From Mexico City government cultural affairs office @CulturaCiudadMx, (https://www.flickr.com/photos/culturacdmx/albums) 
• The Institute for Research on University and Education, UNAM, online publications:  @IISUE_UNAM
• CC photographer @eneas 
• A feminist academic magazine:  @DebateFeminista
• Mexican rock band: @holabelafonte
• On Latam: Center for Advanced Latin American Studies @CalasCenter http://www.calas.lat/sites/default/files/garcia_canclini.ciudadanos_reemplazados_por_algoritmos.pdf 
• Not only on Mexico and Latam, also projects on Africa: “Making a Feminist Internet Movement building in a digital age in Africa” https://genderit.org/resources/report-making-feminist-internet-movement-building-digital-age-africa
• We also advised Academia Mexicana de la Lengua @AMLengua to include CC licensing for their digital library publications.

CC México: Los proyectos que han optado por las licencias CC en México son muy diversos: La Secretaría de Cultura del gobierno de la Ciudad de México, el Instituto para la Investigación de la Universidad y la Educación, en la UNAM, algunos fotógrafos mexicanos como Rodrigo González, alias @eneas, la banda de rock mexicana Belafote. En Latinoamérica, el Centro de Estudios Avanzados en América Latina. Y también hemos hecho algunos enlaces con proyectos en otros continentes, como el realizado por APC, el informe: “Making a Feminist Internet Movement building in a digital age in Africa.” 

CC: Anything else you want to share?

CC Mexico: 

• We translated the book “Made with Creative Commons” into Spanish. Available here. 
• Our presentation video!
• “The Creative Commons Caravan” with the “Stand-up comedy of Copyright” A very funny stand up comedy, when the CC MX lawyer, Salvador Alcántar, on stage, and our musician José Serralde, will tell you about some fundamentals about copyright and intellectual property; It will answer your doubts, questions, and above all, it will seek to surprise you with the best jokes, coming from the humor of traditional models of management, profit and circulation of creative works. You can see it here. 

CC México:

• Hicimos la traducción al español del libro: “Hecho con Creative Commons”, lo puedes conseguir aquí.
• También, llevamos a cabo la “Caravana Creative Commos,” donde incluímos “El Stand-up de los Derechos de Autor”. Una plática al estilo del stand-up, donde un abogado en el escenario, con un micrófono, nos contó sobre algunos fundamentos de derecho autoral y propiedad intelectual. Respondió las dudas, preguntas, y sobre todo, buscó sorprendernos con los mejores chascarrillos, provenientes del humorismo de los modelos tradicionales de gestión, lucro y circulación de las obras creativas.

Thank you to the CC Mexico team, especially Irene for contributing to the CC Network Fridays feature, and for all of their work in the open community! To see this conversation on Twitter, click here. To become a member of the CCGN, visit our website!

?: Featured image has icons by Guilherme Furtado and Vectors Point via Noun Project (CC BY 3.0).