In 2004 a remarkable event took place in Porto Alegre. With an audience numbering in the thousands, the Creative Commons project in Brazil was launched. The then-Minister of Culture and Grammy Award-winning musician, Gilberto Gil applauded the efforts of these “freedom fighters of cyberspace” and endorsed the project as a way to solve copyright issues “in a more open and democratic way, in a more transparent way for Brazilian society.” His words and musical performance are captured in this short film about the event.

Today, six years later, CC Brazil is again drawing crowds. Following a speech by CC’s founder, Lawrence Lessig, the Brazilian team will later unveil Version 3.0 of the Creative Commons licenses, translated and adapted to Brazilian law. As Ronaldo Lemos, Project Lead of CC Brazil explains, Version 3.0 of the licenses offers a range of improvements upon previous versions, without changing the licenses’ basic structure or function.

The launch will be hosted at Campus Party 2010, a massive innovation festival pulling together young people to build, design, collaborate, and write, powered by a 10GB/s connection and each others’ energy. Lessig’s keynote will be delivered today (Friday, Jan. 29) at 9PM GMT, together with Ronaldo Lemos and Campus Party director Marcelo Branco. You can catch the live stream here on channel 1.

The Creative Commons project in Brazil is hosted by the Center for Technology and Society School of Law at Fundacao Getulio Vargas and is led by Lemos and a team of dedicated lawyers, technologists, and activists.

Congratulations and thank you to CC Brazil!
Image from Creative Commons’ film, “CC Brasil“, directed by Danny Passman / CC BY