Argentina

If you are interested in working with Creative Commons in Argentina, please email affiliate-program@creativecommons.org.

Creative Commons would like to thank its prior affiliate Bienes Comunes for its hard work creating the Argentina jurisdiction-specific licenses.

Archives for Argentina Licenses

Prior Legal Lead: Professor Ariel Vercelli

License Draft

English explanation of substantive legal changes

Discussion List

Discussion Archives

Team information

Jurisdiction: Argentina

Afiliated Institutions: Wikimedia Argentina - Fundación Vía Libre

Complete list of all members of the Affiliate Team, their roles, and field(s) of expertise

Beatriz Busaniche is a professor at the Social Sciences Faculty of the National University of Buenos Aires, works for Vía Libre Foundation and is a Founding Member of Wikimedia Argentina. She has earned a Mass Communication Degree from National Univesity of Rosario and is currently preparing her Masters Degree on Intellectual Property at FLACSO Argentina. She's our public team leader for FVL. http://www.vialibre.org.ar and http://www.bea.org.ar

Patricio Lorente is the Chairman and one of the Founding members of Wikimedia Argentina. Patricio works at the National University of La Plata. A very active wikipedian, he is an administrator in Wikipedia in Spanish since 2006. He is our Public Leader for WA. http://www.wikimedia.org.ar and http://www.patriciolorente.com.ar

Lila Pagola is a photographer, designer and visual artist. She is a professor at the National University of Villa María and the National University of Cordoba. Based in Córdoba, where she is one of the main promoters of Free Culture, Lila is the main editor of RWX, a CC licensed free culture digital magazine. She is one of the leaders of Nomade Project. Member of Vía Libre Foundation and Wikimedia Argentina. http://www.nomade.org.ar and http://culturarwx.net/

Evelin Heidel is a student at the University of Buenos Aires. She has been active in promoting free access to educational materials at the University since 2007. Member of Vía Libre Foundation and regular contributor of http://www.derechoaleer.org.

Juan Pablo Suárez is a Graphic Designer (University of Buenos Aires), musician and free software user. He works freelance in graphic design since 1995 and develops his activism in favour of free access to culture from his blog "Derecho a Leer", www.derechoaleer.org, and from a section in Users magazine. Juan Pablo collaborates regularly with organizations from the free culture field, and at this moment he is working in the content management system Cyclope GPL at CodigoSur organization. http://www.derechoaleer.org

José C. Massón is an engineering student at the National Technology University, Buenos Aires, who is active in the free software and in the community media movements. At FM La Tribu, he leads the first radio program distributed under CC license in Argentina. José works as a free software developer at Cooperativa GCoop. http://www.fmlatribu.com and http://www.gcoop.coop

Gabriel Acquistapace is the main leader of USLA Project, (Free Software Users of Argentina), a free software infrastructure project aiming to support free culture and free software using free, community driven and self managed infrastructure for the community. He has strong ties with the national free software community. Member of FVL and of the Board of Wikimedia Argentina. http://www.usla.org.ar

Soledad Nakama is a member of Vía Libre Foundation. She is interested in the educational field. http://www.vialibre.org.ar

Matías Lennie is a musician with a long experience and commitment in the free culture field. As one of the founders and active promoters of RedPanal.org he has been producing music and audio projects under CC Licenses and participating in several free culture initiatives in Argentina and the region. http://www.redpanal.com

Vision

Why is Creative Commons important for the jurisdiction?

Argentina is a country with three main features: a long cultural tradition founded on the conflictive relationship between the canonical models from elsewhere and artistic practices, cultural and academic innovation in the periphery; a profound social inequality between those who can access quality education, culture and information and those who do not, and sui generis legislative tradition governed by models designed for developed societies, being the intellectual property law just one example of this.

In this context, cultural, artistic and academic background is diverse, thriving and crossed by numerous debates about the relationship established between the center and periphery. The issues surrounding distribution and access to information, culture and education have been debated for a long time, but often lack practical proposals that can help settle these debates and contribute to its growth. In this sense, the development of the local chapter of Creative Commons is presented as necessary for:

1. Providing practical tools such as licensing, advising the various groups currently working in education, culture and information, on the terms and conditions of licenses, their use and benefits of its adoption;
2. Building a community of action and debate on major issues related to authorship and culture;
3. Disseminating alternative ways of thinking, understanding and practicing the social role of culture;
4. Supporting the development and dissemination of artistic, cultural and educational use free licenses;
5. Stimulating discussions about the current intellectual property law;
6. Thinking sustainable alternatives to the problems of job insecurity of workers of culture and the social need for access to education, culture and information in equal conditions;
7. Strengthing diversity, actions and perspectives of existing groups of free culture (musicians, publishers, educators and academics, community media, etc.).

What do you think makes a successful jurisdiction project?

1. The relationship between daily activities of affiliated organizations and goals and initiatives of Creative Commons: The affiliated NGOs already have experience on using CC licenses and are pretty well known in our region. Wikimedia local chapter is one of the oldest chapters in the world, has organized a very successful wikimania event in 2009 and is also leading the creation of other chapters in the region. FVL is a 10 years old free software and free culture organization in Argentina, with six books published on the field of human rights, intellectual property and access to knowledge, along with brochures and other dissemination material. It also has experience in working with organisations from other parts of the world. Both organizations also have strong ties with local media and journalists and both are active participants of the free software community in Argentina.
2. The strength of community, its ability to embody commited new members and to spread the activities and ideology: In this direction, there are communities of free culture that Creative Commons needs to get closer, along with the strengthen of a local community of Creative Commons.

How do you see the jurisdiction project contributing to the CC Affiliate Network?

We have been working with local artists, musicians, journalists, professors and students, wikipedians, and other free culture groups for a long time. It is expected that such community could be brought into Creative Commons since many of them have been actively using the licenses, but don't feel like part of Creative Commons.

FVL foundation has been active in the field for the last 10 years. Wikimedia Argentina is one of the most active wikimedia chapters in the world. Both institutions have strong ties with local media, journalists, academic field and free software and culture communities. During the last decade we built a solid reputation in our country, and that's why we have been invited in several opportunities in requests for expertise in different fields of public policies and law making. As an example of this, recently the National Government invited both, FVL and WA, to take part in the Advisory Board of Conectar Igualdad, the ambitious digital inclusion program for Secondary Schools in Argentina.

Both, FVL and WA have strong ties with Academic Institutions and a broader scope of activities. FVL has been active in other fields like authors rights debate, access to knowledge, net neutrality, open standards, free software, privacy, freedom of speech and civil rights in digital environments. FVL has been active in several debates around ICTs and Intellectual property issues, by following different UN debates like the World Summit on the Information Society (2003) and World Intellectual Property Organization debates (Specially, WIPO Development Agenda Debate in 2007).

Community

Describe the communities that are currently active in the project.

• Free software community: Vía Libre Foundation has strong ties with Free software communities in Argentina.
• Wikimedia Community.
• Librarians' community: we are working with librarians associations like AGBRA, The National Library and with the libraries of the University of Buenos Aires.
• Professors' community: Specially university professors, but not only. Our participation in the Conectar Igualdad Advisory Board will help us spread the word in the education field in Argentina, specially among school teachers.
• Students community: Specially university students, who are interested in participating in the debates of access to knowledge.
• Artists' community: Our relationship with local creators communities like musicians, designers and artists, photographers and community media will help us strengthen our community in Argentina. We also work with independent publishers that are already working with CC licenses.
• Public Institutions: We are currently working with National Public Radio and Television, INADI and other public agencies in national and local level.

How will you continue to engage with these communities?

Free Software Community: We will take part of the usual free software events in Argentina, participating in local events like FLISOL, CaFeConf (the annual CaFeLUG meeting with about 1000 participants from all over the region), Jornadas Regionales de Software Libre in Salta, and other FS and Free culture events in 2011.

Wikimedia Community: Wikimedia Argentina will host an Iberoamerican Wikimedia meeting in La Plata, Argentina, in coordination with the National University of La Plata. The conference will bring together participants from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Paraguay, Portugal, Spain, Uruguay, Venezuela and other countries. Creative Commons community will have an important role in this meeting scheduled for June/July 2011. Wikimedia Argentina will also take part of Wikimania 2011 in Haifa Israel.

Librarians: Librarians community in Argentina is promoting a bill on L&E to copyright for librarians, and is also very active in the open access movement. CC-ar will accompany those efforts in the local A2K movement and will promote the use of CC licenses for open educational resources projects.

Teachers, Professors and Students: Vía Libre and Wikimedia Argentina are part of the Advisory Board of the Plan Conectar Igualdad, the national initiative to provide secondary students with 3 millions of netbooks in the next 3 years. As members of the Advisory board, we will promote the production of Open Educational Resources and the use of CC licenses in the whole program. We are also working very close to national universities like UBA (Buenos Aires), UNVM (Villa María) and UNC (Córdoba), where they are already using CC licenses for their academic works. We will also cooperate with National University of La Plata (UNLP), where one of our team leaders works. UNLP is one of our main partners in our cooperation project with Public Radio and Television.

Creators Community: this is one of the main challenges in Argentina, where we have one of the most restrictive copyright law (as mentioned in Consumers International IP Law research for year 2010). We'll try to work with local artistic communities like photographers, designers, artists, musicians, using different strategies like local events, legal support and promotion through different media like Community Radios. We already have strong ties with free culture communities like Red Panal (musicians), Project Nomade (designers), FLIA (Feria del Libro Independiente A-, a gathering of independent publishers) community radios like FM La Tribu, and other initiatives.

Public Institutions: We are currently working with the public Radio and TV System in Argentina. We'll reinforce this alliance in order to promote the use of CC licenses. We will promote transparency, open government and open access to information policies in Argentina.

Priority Goals

• What are the three most important focus areas on which the Affiliate Team will work during this time period? Please consider community building and adoption goals among your priorities.

1. Focus-area: Community building

• Why is it important? Building and promoting the community will help us promote the licenses, promote free culture and improve the local community participation. Over the past years, Argentina had a lot of free culture projects using CC licenses, but as isolated projects, most of them don't even consider themselves a CC-ar Community, so community building is going to be our main focus area during 2011.

• Which communities will benefit? artists, journalists, wikipedians, academic institutions, students, professors.

2. Focus-area: Communication strategies (Website, promotion, social media, mass media etc)

• Why is it important? CC-ar doesn't have a web site yet, so it lacks of a proper way to advertise the major events and CC projects and answer questions from the general audience. As the domain name www.creativecommons.org.ar was still free, we registered it in order to use this web site to promote CC projects, answer FAQs, give legal and community support to newcomers and serve as a reference for the free culture movement in Argentina.

• Which communities will benefit ? general public, artists and creators, journalists, wikimedia communities, librarians, professors, students, etc.

3. Focus-area: Education (public universities, OER, Conectar Igualdad)

• Why is it important? In Argentina, education is not only public (state), it is also free. The state is the biggest investor in education and public research, but many of the materials that the state helps funding, such as books, go to the private field through the mechanism of copyright. In a country with major inequalities in education, often the choice is either to break the law or not to be educated. Therefore, it is important to show that there are legal solutions to these problems and that is also possible to make inexpensive distribution of educational materials by changing the licensing policy. This seems particular important at this moment, when argentinean government is promoting an ambitious digital inclusion program called Conectar Igualdad, which aims to distribute 3 million netbooks all over the country. The pedagogic plan behind the plan is still unclear, but as we have two of our team members as part of the Advisory Board of CI, we consider this as a unique opportunity to promote free culture, open educational resources and CC licenses within the program.

• Which communities will benefit? professors, students, and librarians.

4. Focus-area: Public Media Cooperation (RTA)

• Why is it important? RTA, together with Vía Libre Foundation, Wikimedia Argentina and the National University of La Plata are already working together in a project aiming to democratize the historic archives of the public radio and TV in Argentina. Some high historic value videos are already published under CC licenses in Wikimedia Commons. We want to do much more, and also promote CC licenses in some educational new materials that are being produced in public media.

• Which communities will benefit? wikimedia communities, general public, mass media.

Project Outputs

• Detail tangible project outputs (e.g., events, papers, blog posts, video/films, etc.) for each focus area including an expected date of completion. See also Timeline.

The outputs we plan to complete are as follows

1. Focus-area Community building

1. Project Output: 3 events (seminars)/ Blog posts / video coverage of the events.
2. Expected start date - Expected date of completion: March to november 2011.
3. Team Member(s) Responsible: Beatriz Busaniche / Lila Pagola / Evelin Heidel /Patricio Lorente
4. How will this output help achieve your goals? face to face meetings will help us improve the concept of a local community and will help us understand what are the community needs in our area. One of the seminars will take place during the wikimedia iberoamerican chapters meeting in La Plata.

2. Focus-area: Communication strategies

1. Project Output: website www.creativecommons.org.ar
2. Expected start date - Expected date of completion march / dec. 2011
3. Team Member(s) Responsible: Beatriz Busaniche / Juan Pablo Suárez / Evelin Heidel / Gabriel Acquistapace
4. How will this output help achieve your goals? The website is a crucial tool for the other key goal of our local team: it will be our main communication tool, also will help us promote the licenses, our events, answering faqs and promoting CC community in Argentina.

3. Focus-area: Education projects

1. Project Output: participation and reports on Conectar Igualdad Projects. Website articles, participation in Conectar Igualdad main conference scheduled for August 2011.
2. Expected start date - Expected date of completion: feb to dec 2011.
3. Team Member(s) Responsible: Patricio Lorente / Beatriz Busaniche / Lila Pagola / Evelin Heidel
4. How will this output help achieve your goals? Our articles on Conectar Igualdad will help us spread the word on the fundamental issues of copyright on educational areas, promote the use of CC licenses within the program and will bring transparency and provide public information on the activities of Conectar Igualdad Program.

1. Project Output: adoption of Creative Commons licenses for research projects, thesis and other educational resources produced in the public university
2. Expected start date - Expected date of completion: feb to dec 2011.
3. Team Member(s) Responsible: Patricio Lorente / Beatriz Busaniche / Lila Pagola / Evelin Heidel
4. How will this output help achieve your goals? This project will promote and provide visibility to CC licenses in the academic field and will also help us promote the debate around free access to knowledge produced with public funding at public institutions.

4. Focus-area: Public Media

1. Project Output: One seminar at RTA / RTA Videos under CC licenses / Materials published at Wikimedia Commons.
2. Expected start date - Expected date of completion: feb. to dec. 2011.
3. Team Member(s) Responsible: Beatriz Busaniche / Patricio Lorente / Evelin Heidel / José Masson.
4. How will this output help achieve your goals? The seminar will facilitate the process of licensing and publication of the archive materiales from RTA. In this project we have to deal with differente challenges: not only legal ones, but also we need to promote the use of open standards as theora ogg for the videos. Catalogation of the archives is another big challenge we'll face. Our seminar will help us learn more about the key problems and try to figure our how to solve them. We will talk with the legal department of the Public Media to promote the adoption of the licenses as much as possible. We aim to facilitate the adoption of the licenses at Public Media, and the seminar will be a key strategy for that.

Metrics

Please consider using trackable statistics (such as web traffic or number of license adoptions) when applicable, but only if meaningful.

• How will you measure and evaluate your impact on focus-area 1? number of attendees to events / number of events attended / Number of events organized by our community
• How will you measure and evaluate your impact on focus-area 2? web traffic
• How will you measure and evaluate your impact on focus-area 3? number of license adoptions in education institutions.
• How will you measure and evaluate your impact on focus-area 4? Number of archives released under CC licenses.

Resources Required

People

• What human resources or expertise must the team seek out or add to your existing resources, if any, in order to achieve your priority goals?

We already have a diverse team, but we lack of legal expertise. As we do not have a lawyer in our team yet, our priority goals for year 2011 are not specially related to legal issues. Our priority goals are more focused on community building, to take some time to seek for a legal advisor for our local team.

- How will you involve these people? We are already looking for a lawyer, we hope our community building events will help us find interested candidates. We are also talking to legal studios in Argentina and looking for a lawyer in the field of authors rights. We will also ask neighbor jurisdictions like Chile and Columbia for help on this field.

Technology

• What technology resources must the team seek out or add to your existing resources, if any, in order to achieve your priority goals?

We already have a strong technological infrastructure provided by USLA, based on free software and open standards, maintained by free software community in Argentina. Having this in mind, we can also offer technical support to other jurisdictions in our region. Both organizations, FVL and WA, are using this infrastructure for their web services, e-mail, wikis, etc.

o How will you obtain these technology resources?

Materials

• What material resources must the team seek out or add to your existing resources, if any, in order to achieve your priority goals?

For the events, we will need a room (and conference infraestructure) and travel expenses.

We will also need promotional materials, some of them in spanish. We will need funding for translations, graphic design and printing.

o How will you obtain these material resources?

We usually organize events and conferences with local academic organizations that provide conference infraestructure for free. We will cooperate with UBA, UNC, UNLP and FLACSO in order to do so. We also have support from the Centro Cultural de la Cooperación and Centro Cultural General San Martín, two important cultural centers in the heart of Buenos Aires, that usually provide congress facilities to host our events at no cost.

We will look for sponsors for our events and for printed promotional materials as well.

Other

• What other resources must the team seek out or add to all the other resources, if any, in order to achieve your priority goals?
  • How will you obtain these other resources?

Sustainability and Scalability

• How will you ensure your goals will be completed if unforeseen circumstances interrupt the project, such as changes in the leadership of the project or outputs taking longer to complete than anticipated?

We know that we are mostly volunteers, that's the reason why one of our main goals this first year will be building a community. We have a very diverse team and we are all committed to the goals of this roadmap. We build it, basically, mixing our current activities in order to start working on a solid base. So, FVL and WA already have some of these goals in their working plans and already have teams working on them.

Both, FVL and WA teams are very active in the free culture field since long time ago. Our CC-ar Team includes diverse profiles of recognized people in different areas like design, music, media, wikimedia and academic community as well. Each of them has the capacity to be a team leader, as most of them are already doing so in other projects. That will help us spread the responsibilities among the team. We are all committed to do so to the best of our capacities.

• How will you communicate the project's on-going progress and setbacks within the jurisdiction and the CC Affiliate Network? (e.g. email list updates, meetings, press releases)

We'll use our websites to promote the on-going progress of the projects. But we will also use other tools like the cc-ar mailing list, meetings and press releases as well. Most of the activities related to the wikiworld will be promoted using wikimedia infraestructure as well.

• How will you document the project so that others may replicate or learn from your efforts?

We always publish text material online, however, the public events will be video recorded and we will publish them on different websites like blip.tv and Wikimedia Commons.

Collaboration

• Please have a look at other roadmaps.

- How could the jurisdiction's plans help drive or support other jurisdictions' activities?

We do not know if other jurisdictions are working with public media. This is an interesting experience we could actually share with others. Also, our iberoamerican initiative for Wikimedia Communities could help us reinforce the relationship between wikimedia communities and CC comunities in our region.

- What are other jurisdictions doing that might support or contribute to the project?

The OER movement is important in other jurisdictions. So we expect to join the initiatives alredy active in the region, specially Chile, Colombia, Guatemala and Spain.

We will also need support from other spanish speaking jurisdictions in order to fill our legal gap until we find a lawyer in Argentina.

• Would you be interested in mentoring new jurisdiction teams?

Yes, We are not ready for that yet, but we'll be happy to do it anyway!

• Conversely, would you be interested in having a mentor from a more experienced jurisdiction team?

Yes, we'd be thankful to other teams willing to help us. We count on that!

Regional

• Suggest three possible projects on which you can collaborate with other teams on a regional level. If you are not yet involved with the regional network, please contact the regional spokesperson (if any) or notify CC HQ to put you in touch with others.

• How do you plan to contribute to these projects?

Translation

• In what language(s) will you promote CC in the jurisdiction and why?

Spanish is the official language in Argentina.

• In which of these languages are licenses already available? CC0?

Spanish, CC0 is not yet available in our language.

• Into which of the remaining languages do you intend to translate the licenses? CC0?

• How will you involve the local language(s) community?