Poland: Mass protests against ACTA

For the past week, protests have taken place across Poland against anti-counterfeiting law ACTA in dozens of cities.

Submitted by akai on January 27, 2012

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.

Comments

akai

12 years 9 months ago

Submitted by akai on January 27, 2012

No time now to make a deeper

No time now to make a deeper analysis but I can say that we have been active in these protests and in bringing more radical discussion into things. This is also a good time for internet debates about issues such as private property, which normally are not criticized too much in this country.

We have a few photos and videos up on this blog:
http://zspwawa.blogspot.com/2012/01/more-protests-against-acta.html

no1

12 years 9 months ago

Submitted by no1 on February 4, 2012

Quote: Anger at last month's

Anger at last month's decision by the European Union and 22 of its member states to sign the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has led to widespread protests, hacked Web sites, and legislators backing away from the treaty.

The anti-ACTA protests that saw Polish politicians don Guy Fawkes masks in parliament have borne fruit. After experiencing a considerable backlash in Poland, Prime Minister Donald Tusk has suspended ratification of the controversial agreement, acknowledging that the consultation surrounding it was inadequate and that he approached it from a "20th century perspective."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/02/acta-on-the-edge-in-europe-poland-suspends-ratification-greece-gets-hacked.ars

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