For the first time ever in Mexico, we’ve organized a multi-actor dialogue on the public domain, meaning works whose patrimonial authoring rights have expired after a time frame. In Mexico, it is after 100 years of the publication and/or the author’s death.
We shared a panel with the Instituto Nacional de Derecho de Autor (Copyright National Institute) and discussed the challenges cultural institutions face when they want to incorporate/merge their archives into the Wikimedia projects in a country whose federal copyright law is the most restrictive in the world.
Within the activities of Public Domain Day, Wikimedia Mexico organized the Dominio público y el papel de las instituciones culturales (Public Domain and the Role of Cultural Institutions) panel discussion. We gathered on Thursday, January 29th, at Museo del Estanquillo in Mexico City, a place that houses the personal collection of Mexican writer Carlos Monsiváis, made of over twenty thousand pieces, including works by Diego Rivera, Francisco Toledo, Claudio Linatti, Leopoldo Méndez, Pablo O’Higgins, and Raúl Anguiano, aside from one of the biggest José Guadalupe Posada work collections and photographs by Hugo Brehme, Nacho López, Héctor García, Guillermo Kahlo, Agustín Jiménez, and Armando Herrera.
The panel assembled Ana Laura Peña Aguilar, Museo del Estanquillo Carlos Monsiváis Collection’s Digital Project Manager; Alberto Arenas Badillo, INDAUTOR’s Copyright Reserves Director; Ricardo Montes Gómez, Head of the Parliamentary Library of the Republic’s Senate; Ivan Martínez, wikimedian, human rights advocate at Red en Defensa de los Derechos Digitales (Digital Rights Defense Network, R3D) and open and free knowledge activist; and Tania Vargas, Chief of Franz Mayer Museum’s Library and Documental Archive and member of the Red de Bibliotecas y Archivos del Centro Histórico de la Ciudad de México. (Mexico City’s Historic Center Library and Archive Network, RBACH).
The conversation revolved around the challenges cultural institutions face when preserving and digitizing works that are not yet in the public domain. The Biblioteca del Senado de la República (The Republic Senate’s Library) acknowledges that thanks to collaborations with Wikimedia Mexico, it has been possible to recently release works under Creative Commons licenses, which is the case of two complete historical books: the Primer Almanaque Histórico de la República Mexicana (First Mexican Republic Historic Almanac) and the Libro Rojo (Red Book); both of them recount national historical moments.
Another challenge acknowledged unanimously within the conservatory is that neither the government nor the INDAUTOR have an updated catalogue or system that provides, in an organized way, information on works under the public domain. In this regard, Wikimedia Mexico proposed joining institutional efforts to nurture the Paulina project, a tool based on Wikidata that facilitates locating authors, identifying if they are in the public domain, and getting access to their work.
The institutions involved agreed to carry on with the conversation on further opportunities and joint activities.
Aquí puedes ver el conversatorio completo.
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