Mexico’s National Commission for Human Rights has taken a crucial step towards averting a human rights catastrophe, asking Mexico’s Supreme Court to assess the constitutionality of the Mexican copyright law: The Commission stated that the law contains “possible violations of the rights to freedom of expression, property, freedom of commerce or work and cultural rights, among others.”

Last month, Mexico enacted a terrible new copyright law, one that duplicated the worst aspects of the US copyright system without even including its (largely inadequate) protections. The new Mexican law–passed as part of Donald Trump's US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA)–is dangerous to the human rights of Mexican people and puts Mexican businesses at a permanent, structural disadvantage relative to companies in the USA and Canada.

As we explained in detail, the law has wide-ranging impacts on Mexicans' human rights: from free expression to cybersecurity; from disability, education, health and repair to national sovereignty (you can download all our analysis here).

EFF was proud to stand with the many Mexican civil society organizations, including R3D and Derechos Digitales, and with the thousands of Mexican people who demanded that the National Commission for Human Rights bring the law before the Supreme Court of Justice on the basis of its blatant unconstitutionality. After all, Mexico's free speech protections are among the strongest in the world, and these protections were roundly ignored during the drafting of the new law.

We are greatly cheered to learn that the Commission has petitioned the Supreme Court of Justice to overturn this law!

However, this process of court review can take years, and every day that this law is in force, it creates real damage for the Mexican people and Mexican industry: pressuring companies to apply automated speech filters, exposing Internet users to the danger of being "doxxed" for speaking out, interfering with the repair of medical and agricultural equipment and preventing people with disabilities from adapting the technology they rely on.

Because of these real, ongoing harms, we call upon the Supreme Court of Justice to suspend this law pending its judgment. The Mexican people can't afford to wait years for their digital human rights to be recognized.

(Our thanks to Luis Fernando García Muñoz from R3D for his translation of the quotation from the Commission’s press release, above)