ACTA - Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

I decided to give this Blog business another bash, but unfortunately i couldn't reactivate my previous one, so here we are!

For my introductory post, i'll be talking about different aspects of ACTA, an agreement that on October 2011 was signed by Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and the United States, and on January 2012 signed by up to 22 member states of the European Union, and yes, that includes the UK.

What is ACTA?


This is being pushed through as an international agreement that looks to set the standards across the globe on intellectual property rights enforcement. This agreement was intended to protect intellectual property and the text itself sounds like it would deal with counterfeit goods. This however, is not the case.

The following video gives you a simple breakdown and explanation about ACTA and what the big deal is about. It's worth a watch.

ACTA was first leaked in 2008 but unfortunately hasn't received a great deal of attention until now. This "Agreement" will cripple future freedoms of communication and creativity across the world. ACTA will introduce revised SOPA bills which will severely censor and ultimately destroy the Internet as we know it.

Fortunately there is still time for this Agreement to be binned. Despite it being signed by many previously mentioned countries, it will still need to pass a European Vote to affect ourselves which should happen sometime in June this year. With enough anti-ACTA voices, we should get our point put towards those that can make the difference.

January 27th, a group of Polish politicians had shown their support for ACTA, it would be news to see our very own UK Government show the same sort of support...

If ACTA was introduced, places like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, some of the most popular websites in the world would struggle to continue. Copyright and Counterfeit bills playing by ACTA's rules would render these websites inert.

That's a wrap folks!

"The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses."