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| Protesters demonstrate against ACTA (Image by AFP/Getty Images via @daylife) |
◼ The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) was signed yesterday by the European Commission, leading to protests across Europe but especially in Poland where thousands of citizens took to the streets over concerns of online censorship. - Forbes (image source)
Some EU leaders are unhappy as well. Kader Arif, the European Parliament’s rapporteur for ACTA, resigned over the issue on Friday, saying he had witnessed “never-before-seen manoeuveres” by the officials responsible for crafting the treaty.◼ If You Thought SOPA Was Bad, Just Wait Until You Meet ACTA - Forbes
In a statement, Arif said: “I condemn the whole process which led to the signature of this agreement: no consultation of the civil society, lack of transparency since the beginning of negotiations, repeated delays of the signature of the text without any explanation given, reject of Parliament’s recommendations as given in several resolutions of our assembly.”
Few people have heard of ACTA, or the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, but the provisions in the agreement appear quite similar to – and more expansive than – anything we saw in SOPA. Worse, the agreement spans virtually all of the countries in the developed world, including all of the EU, the United States, Switzerland and Japan....
The treaty has been secretly negotiated behind the scenes between governments with little or no public input. The Bush administration started the process, but the Obama administration has aggressively pursued it.
Indeed, we signed ACTA in 2011.
According to critics, ACTA bypasses the sovereign laws of participating nations, forcing ISP’s across the globe to act as internet police.
Worse, it appears to go much further than the internet, cracking down on generic drugs and making food patents even more radical than they are by enforcing a global standard on seed patents that threatens local farmers and food independence across the developed world....
Update: An earlier version of this post claimed the act required Senate ratification. Reports are conflicting, but it appears this is not the case. ACTA has been signed as a sole executive agreement, meaning the president’s signature on this is all it takes for it to become law, though Sen. Ron Wyden has questioned the constitutionality of that move on the part of the administration.
◼ How To Protest ACTA - Dave Thier/Forbes
The internet is starting to mobilize against the controversial bill, but ACTA is already moving forward in the European parliament. Protests against it are much less developed than those against SOPA, but they will certainly move quickly. For starters, French digital rights advocacy group La Quadrature has posted a ◼ how-to guide on protesting in seven different languages.
