The European Union has, by a landslide, voted to reject the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) Treaty:
said in a statement
For an international treaty to work well all the major players need to be at the table. Europe just flipped the table and walked out of the room. "The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is dead" is the buzz phrase bouncing around the blogosphere. One might think the jingle refers to the Wicked Witch of West. It may as well-- in February many tremendous protests erupted all around Europe denouncing the treaty as a wolf in sheep's clothing.
ACTA even spurred Anonymous into action, well-known now for zealously guarding the free and open Internet. In fact the EU Parliament and Polish government's websites were shut down by "denial of service attacks."
The Open Rights Group's Jim Killock called the agreement "undemocratic"
The detractors of ACTA claimed that while the stated purpose of the treaty is to curtail international piracy of copyrighted material, in practice it would be used to curtail speech, expression, and even net access. Proponents of the treaty cited concerns about protecting artists, musicians, and companies from having their material dredged from the deeps of Pirate Bay.
But at the end of the day, at least in Europe, in the face of mounting demonstrations across the small continent, the policy makers decided to dramatically side with the public.
For those that care about Internet Freedom this news is a ray of sunshine. Across the Atlantic Ocean, a new "Technology Revolution" manifesto was announced by Congressman Ron Paul's libertarian Campaign for Liberty just a day after Europe rejected ACTA. Perhaps this is just part of a bigger stream of events coming down the pipeline concerning net freedom. Are international treaties sparking international resistance? Perhaps the manifesto and the new Declaration of Internet Freedom are evidence of this.
While the struggle between the pro-copyright enforcement and pro-Internet Freedom camps is far from over, these events in Europe mark a decisive turn of the tide.