ACTA headed for dustbin

Published on 13 February 2012 at 11:07

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“The wave of social protests rolls across Europe. Poles have given example on how to fight ACTA”, headlines Rzeczpospolita, after demonstrations against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) were held in 150 cities last weekend, the largest of those in Germany and the Netherlands. The controversial multi-national agreement aims to establish international standards for intellectual property rights enforcement, but its opponents claim it will have adverse effects on civil and digital rights.

“They’ve followed Poland’s example”, Rzeczpospolita is happy to note, stressing that the first mass protestsagainst ACTA took place in January in many Polish cities, forcing the government to “suspend” the process of the agreement’s ratification.

Now also Germany, one of the proposed legislation’s main advocates, is starting to wonder whether to ratify it and that, as we read in Polska The Times, means that the “ACTA is already dead”. The agreement’s demise will likely be signed and sealed in June by the European Parliament. According to the daily -

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Politicians deserved their cold shower after forgetting that they should listen to the voice of the people.

Gazeta Wyborcza, in turn, notesthat rejecting the ACTA will not bring us closer to ensuring that authors receive “fair compensation” -

Copyright law is imperfect and breeds pathologies [...] we can decide it is a harmful relic of the past and allow everyone to copy everything. But then we’ll need to devise a new way of rewarding creative work.

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