Yesterday's ACTA Protests →

The anti-ACTA protests hat were organized yesterday seem to have been quite a success, with thousands and thousands of participants. This map on TorrentFreak show just how massive and widespread discontent against ACTA was.

I haven’t posted about ACTA as opposed to SOPA and Protect-IP because I haven’t had the time to educate myself about it, but the fact that the MPAA is one of the act’s staunchest supporters is probably reason enough to earn your immediate mistrust. There’s a brief primer on ACTA up at the EFF, as well as a blog post worth your time. From the post:

While it was only negotiated between a few countries, it has global consequences. First because it will create new rules for the Internet, and second, because its standards will be applied to other countries through the U.S.’s annual Special 301 process. Negotiated in secret, ACTA bypassed checks and balances of existing international IP norm-setting bodies, without any meaningful input from national parliaments, policymakers, or their citizens. Worse still, the agreement creates a new global institution, an “ACTA Committee” to oversee its implementation and interpretation that will be made up of unelected members with no legal obligation to be transparent in their proceedings. Both in substance and in process, ACTA embodies an outdated top-down, arbitrary approach to government that is out of step with modern notions of participatory democracy.