After successful protests against SOPA and PIPA the web world had no time to savor its short victory. Megaupload was taken down by the FBI on January 19th and now a much more significant to internet freedom threat lurks. 2012 does not seem very bright at all. While the Stop Online Piracy Act and PROTECT IP Act were US introduced bills, the new menace has global reach. It's impact could be horrendous. The worst part: ACTA has already been signed by 31 states without the consent of its citizens!
ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is a plurilateral agreement for the purpose of establishing international standards for intellectual property rights enforcement. The agreement aims to establish an international legal framework for targeting counterfeit goods, generic medicines and copyright infringement on the Internet, and would create a new governing body outside existing forums, such as the World Trade Organization, the World Intellectual Property Organization, or the United Nations.
Reasons to oppose ACTA (by La Quadrature du Net)
Fueled by the movement to stop SOPA, anti-ACTA protests are breaking out across the EU, which hasn't ratified ACTA. The protests are having an impact: leaders in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia have backtracked on ACTA. Now a massive round of street protests in over 200 cities is planned today, February 11th 2012. Below is a world map showing all ACTA protests. Join the closest one to you if you support Internet freedom.
- ACTA locks countries into obsolete copyright and patent laws. If a democracy decides on less restrictive laws that reflect the reality of the internet, ACTA will prevent that.
- ACTA criminalizes users by making noncommercial, harmless remixes into crimes if "on a commercial scale" (art 2.14.1). Many amateur works achieve a commercial scale on sites like Youtube. ACTA, like SOPA, could mean jail time for the Justin Biebers of the world.
- ACTA Criminalizes legitimate websites, making them responsible for user behavior by "aiding and abetting". (art 2.14.4). Like SOPA, the founders of your favorite sites could be sued or (worse) thrown in jail for copyright infringement by their users.
- ACTA will let rightsholders use laughably inflated claims of damages (based on the disproven idea that every download or stream is a lost sale) to sue people. As if suing amazing artists, video makers and websites for millions wasn't hard enough!
- ACTA Permanently bypasses democracy by giving the "ACTA Committee" the power to "propose amendments to [ACTA]" (art 6.4). In other words, voting for ACTA writes a blank check to an unelected committee. These closed-door proceedings will be a playground for SOPA-supporters like the MPAA.
- Trade agreements are a gaping loophole, a backdoor track that, even though it creates new law, is miles removed from democracy. It's a secretive process that's tailor-made to serve politically connected companies. And the movie studios behind SOPA? They're experts at it. If we can't make secretive trade agreements harder to pass than US law, our internet's future belongs to the lobbyists behind SOPA.
Fueled by the movement to stop SOPA, anti-ACTA protests are breaking out across the EU, which hasn't ratified ACTA. The protests are having an impact: leaders in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia have backtracked on ACTA. Now a massive round of street protests in over 200 cities is planned today, February 11th 2012. Below is a world map showing all ACTA protests. Join the closest one to you if you support Internet freedom.
There are also petitions you can sign all over the internet. The biggest international petition so far is https://www.accessnow.org/page/s/just-say-no-to-acta
For Romanians, the following petition has the most signatures:
http://www.petitieonline.com/opriti_acta
For the most part of its conception and initial negotiations the complete document was not available to the general public. In it's current and final form, ACTA is now available at the following link:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement
For offline viewing, ACTA is available as a downloadable .pdf and can be read in all of the signing states languages here, including in Romanian.
I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Creative Monkeyz team for their efforts into raising awareness towards ACTA. Thanks to their large audience and well crafted presentation more Romanians know what ACTA stands for and understand the ramifications if it comes into force. I've embedded below their short clip which explains in plain language how everyone would be affected.
For Romanians, the following petition has the most signatures:
http://www.petitieonline.com/opriti_acta
For the most part of its conception and initial negotiations the complete document was not available to the general public. In it's current and final form, ACTA is now available at the following link:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement
For offline viewing, ACTA is available as a downloadable .pdf and can be read in all of the signing states languages here, including in Romanian.
I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Creative Monkeyz team for their efforts into raising awareness towards ACTA. Thanks to their large audience and well crafted presentation more Romanians know what ACTA stands for and understand the ramifications if it comes into force. I've embedded below their short clip which explains in plain language how everyone would be affected.