ACTA – Is It Worse Than SOPA?

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The online community was in an uproar about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).  SOPA caused Wikipedia and Reddit blacked out their sites, Google ‘redacted’ their logo, and even some members of congress blacked out their House.gov websites.

The outcry was due to the internet censorship that could have resulted from the SOPA legislation.  The backlash caused bill sponsors to withdraw, and the legislation essentially died.  But the war on the Internet is just getting warmed up.

ACTA seems to be a nasty, dastardly Big Brother to SOPA.  ACTA is an international treaty, rather than US legislation.  The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) states the following on their website:

While little information has been made available by the governments negotiating ACTA a document recently leaked to the public entitled “Discussion Paper on a Possible Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement” from an unknown source gives an indication of what content industry rightsholder groups appear to be asking for – including new legal regimes to “encourage ISPs to cooperate with right holders in the removal of infringing material” criminal measures and increased border search powers. The Discussion Paper leaves open how Internet Service Providers should be encouraged to identify and remove allegedly infringing material from the Internet. However the same industry rightsholder groups that support the creation of ACTA have also called for mandatory network-level filtering by Internet Service Providers and for Internet Service Providers to terminate citizens’ Internet connection on repeat allegation of copyright infringement (the “Three Strikes” /Graduated Response) so there is reason to believe that ACTA will seek to increase intermediary liability and require these things of Internet Service Providers.

Take Action NOW!   Below is another video that you MUST watch, as well as more informational resources and Twitter accounts to follow for updates and breaking information regarding ACTA.

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For more information visit:

EFF’s International Issue Page on ACTA: https://www.eff.org/issues/acta

European Digital Rights’ (EDRi) coverage here: www.edri.org/stopacta

La Quadrature du Net’s coverage here: https://www.laquadrature.net/en/acta

Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure’s (FFII) blog on ACTA https://acta.ffii.org/

Twitter hash tags: #ACTA

Twitter accounts:

@StopActaNow

@ffii

@EDRi_org

@laquadrature