Poland: Mass protests against ACTA

Many thousands have hit the streets despite the bitter cold to show their opposition to more policing on the internet and some demonstrations have taken on a clear anti-governmental character.

Internet users across the country have been self-organizing the protests and flooding the net with outrage. Many sites, including some of the most popular in Poland, went offline in protest. A number of government internet sites were hacked and some politician's emails.

People have had enough and blasted the government for making decisions without informing the public or any debate. The state censorship around the issue was quite strong and, even after mass protests broke out, the government tried in many ways to repress information about them. One thing that the government also did was to delete thousands of comments from Facebook pages it maintains.

More protests are planned throughout the weekend.