ACTA, inform people around you!

[Nodrev]

I saw that some of you acted against SOPA (http://www.ogre3d.org/forums/viewtopic. ... hilit=sopa), so I think you must be aware of another law (in fact it's an international agreement) that is currently debated.

Usually, I do not give my opinion on this kind of subject publicly, but I think that it's sufficiency dangerous to inform everyone about this new threat around the internet, and the open-source/free projects.
The name of the charged is ACTA, which means "Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement":


Like lots of other law project currently debated (or already voted, like our national Hadopi, here in France), it will put in place a global surveillance system, but the concern for which I was shocked about the most is the ambiguity of the status of open-source project in this text: it could be interpreted (as some parts are not very clear) in a way that will simply put open-source illegal!
Lots of other points need clarification, starting by WHO is redacting this agreement?

For some of our worldwide friends (those from Japan, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea), the agreement had already been signed, but for EU, it's not too late!
Please look at http://www.stopacta.info/ to get more information, and talk of it around you!

[Slappy]

Actually the ACTA was rejected in Poland [as first country in EU] so whole EU cannot accept it without this country.
Meanwhile some other countries rejected ACTA too - not sure which but in our country [Slovakia] discusson about ACTA law was delayed for several months.

[duststorm]

I hope it comes crashing down too.

[Nodrev]

Actually the ACTA was rejected in Poland [as first country in EU] so whole EU cannot accept it without this country.
Meanwhile some other countries rejected ACTA too - not sure which but in our country [Slovakia] discusson about ACTA law was delayed for several months.

In fact, UE politics is far more complicated than that, a member country can reject the agreement, but that do not means it can't be validated by the European Parliament: members of this institution (European Deputies) are not necessary members of those governments, and they do not necessary have the same vision on the question. UE laws are voted by European Deputies, not by governments members (nor individual government parliaments/senates)!
Furthermore, European Community laws are proposed by the European Commission, which does not relies on members governments to make their proposals (at least in the officials text, in fact it's a little more complicated). A law can be proposed to European Parliament even if a member country had already relied his negative opinion on it!
There's more little facts about UE internal politic process that makes that this agreement is always a threat, and it concerns all UE citizen (and some other countries too), even if their government have officially announce that they are not favourable to ACTA!