ISPs liability regulated for the first time in Mexico: Amendments to Mexican Federal Copyright Law, in accordance with USMCA provisions.

Amendments to various provisions of the Mexican Federal Copyright Law were approved to conform to the dispositions of our new Free Trade Agreement named United States, Mexico and Canada Agreement (USMCA), which will take effect on July 1st, 2020.

Thus, on July 1st, 2020, an important reform to the Mexican Federal Copyright Law was published in the Official Gazette.

It must be noted that, as commented in the previous publications in this section, before these amendments, Mexico had no provisions regarding obligations or liability for ISPs related to the unauthorized display of copyrighted contents.

Although Mexico had already signed the TPP 11 or CPTPP on April 24, 2018, members decided to suspend 11 (eleven) provisions contained in Chapter 18, including those related to ISPs liability.

So it is the first time that Mexico has adopted legal provisions dealing with ISPs liability, basically to adapt Mexican copyright legislation to meet the demands provided in Chapter 20 of the USMCA, specifically the ones addressing this matter, included in Article 20.88

´These recent amendments have introduced Articles 114 Septies and 114 Octies, into the existent Mexican Federal Copyright Law, containing all the provisions related to ISP’s liability. The drafting of such provisions unfortunately lacks the detail and clarity that are present in other regulations on the same topic. And, moreover, certain issues will only be clarified when the corresponding amendments to the Regulations of the Federal Copyright Law are issued, and the executive power has a term of 180 days as of the publication of the decree commented hereby, to issue the corresponding amendments to the Regulations.