Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) removes any need for SOPA or PIPA. It's WORSE!

By Michael Rose January 24, 2012 - opednews.com


The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) 
is a proposed plurilateral agreement for the purpose 
of establishing international standards on 
intellectual property rights enforcement.

Might sound okay... IF you understand bureaucratic lingo
but ACTA conceals a huge threat in plain view:
ACTA hides a WWW threat even more sinister
than anything SOPA or PIPA ever dreamed up


No 2 ACTA by World Citizens



In such times of crisis, why wouldn't author Lee Harvey Oswald also resort to bullet points?

* countries join voluntarily
* creates a governing body outside international institutions eg WTO,  WIPO, and even the UN itself 
* ACTA includes counterfeit goods, generic medicines & copyright infringement on the Internet 
* civil society groups & developing countries excluded from discussion during ACTA's development, a classic example of policy laundering
* the treaty will restrict fundamental civil and digital rights 
* the WTO's 153 members have raised concerns the treaty could distort trade 
* goes beyond the existing Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights
* ACTA removes legal safeguards that protect ISPs from liability for subscribers' actions 
* ISPs left with no option but to comply with privacy invasions 
* ACTA would require that existing ISPs could no longer host free software 
* DRM-protected media would not be l egally playable with free software 

* Canada, the European Union and Switzerland joined the preliminary talks from 2006. 
* Official negotiations in June 2008, Australia, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Korea and Singapore joining talks.
* The negotiations were classified as secretin the US on the grounds of "damage to the national security"
* Apart from the participating governments, an advisory committee of large US-based multinational corporations was consulted on the content of the draft treaty
* The treaty calls for the creation of a committee to make amendments, 
for which public or judicial review are not required . 
* Industry representatives may have "consultatory input" to amendments
* Google, eBay, Intel, Dell, News Corporation, Sony Pictures, Time Warner, and Verizon all received copies of the draft under a nondisclosure agreement 

* too many early drafts wikileaked, so an official version of the draft released 20 April 2010
* In June 2010, a Law College conference concluded "that the terms of the publicly-released draft of ACTA threaten numerous public interests, 
including every concern specifically disclaimed by negotiators " 
* 75 law professors signed a letter to President Obama demanding that ACTA be halted

* the final text was released on 15 November 2010, English, French, and Spanish texts published on April 15, 2011
* United States, Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Korea  signed the treaty, 1 October 2011 in Tokyo
* the European Union, Mexico, and Switzerland attended but did not sign
* Article 39 of ACTA states countries can sign the treaty until 31 March 2013. 
* European Parliament has the final decision over whether the treaty is dismissed or enacted

* Poland announced on January 19 that it will sign the treaty on January 26, 2012
* Polish Wikipedia plans a blackout to protest the signing, similar to the English Wikipedia 
* Polish government websites were shut down by DOS attacks that started January 21

Source: 
click here
thanks to Wikipedia 

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