Global Voices Online

Berkman Center Executive Director John Palfrey certainly sounds enthusiastic when he writes:

Right this very minute, Creative Commons Mexico is launching in Mexico City. Congratulations, Larry Lessig, Leon Felipe Sanchez, and all the CC International team on yet another landmark on your road to world domination. For atmospherics, Larry has “My Life” playing in the background… (This launch is coinciding with the end of Day 1 of iLaw-Mexico here.)

Eduardo Arcos, a native of Ecuador who now resides in Mexico City, is at iLaw live-blogging each seminar. Regarding spam in Mexico, he summarizes the main points (ES) of Clara Luz Álvarez González de Castilla (pictured) from the Federal Telecommunications Commission (ES) as follows:

• The problem in Mexico is a problem of cybersecurity and it's similar to other countries.
• Spam is occurring in other media. (Text messaging for example, not to mention spam comments on blogs)
• Mexico is the 11th greatest generator of spam.
• There are two constitutional guarantees: freedom of expression, which can't prohibit the mass mailing of messages on the internet and freedom of work which can't prohibit someone from working in this.
• There is a proliferation of political spam.
• There are initiatives to develop policies in relation to cybersecurity in Latin America.
• In Mexico there is a very clear digital divide. With slow connections in the majority of Mexico, reducing spam is a relatively high cost in time and resources.

Photo by Eduardo Arcos

Last week, León Felipe Sánchez interviewed Luis Alberto Bolaños and Emilio Saldaña of the Presidential Internet System (SIP) which recently decided to license all of its content using Creative Commons. When asked why the presidency decided to adopt CC licenses, they responded:

One of the principal interest of the Presidency of the Republic is that, once content is published, it reach the largest quantity of people possible. The content is used by researchers, academics, students, the press, and general public. By using Creative Commons licences, we have the possibility to permit the content's copy, reproduction, diffusion and everything which lets it get shared with more people. All without any charge or commercial cost, which is exactly what the licensing scheme of Creative Commons protects against. All of this, and the fact that it's based in Mexican copyright legislation.

iLaw Mexico continues throughout the day and you are sure to find more coverage on the weblogs of Ariel Vercelli (ES) and Eduardo Arcos (ES).