Thursday, January 26, 2012

Poland signs ACTA - That's all of them

Poland was the last European Union member state to announce its decision to sign ACTA, but has now decided to do so, much to the chagrin of many protesters.

For those of you that don't know, ACTA is an anti-piracy treaty similar to the US's SOPA which has been debated since 2008. The treaty will be signed by the US, Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, and as of now, every country in the EU.

In some ways, ACTA is even harsher than SOPA, as it requires internet service providers to monitor the packages sent and received by their users to check for copyrighted information.

All that's left is for the British parliament to pass the final decision on the treaty.

You probably haven't heard as much about this in the US due to the more well-known SOPA and PIPA, but ACTA is every bit as powerful/dangerous

1 comment:

Brian Barch said...

Here's an article that's better at describing ACTA in general and what's going on with it, which my first article didn't do so well:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-57367837-245/anonymous-takes-aim-over-europes-sopa/?tag=mncol


So even Polish Parliamentary members have taken up the mask of anonymous. It seems strange that the Polish government would sign this, given such noteworthy displays against it, but this whole ACTA thing has been shady backroom dealing from the start anyway.