The European Commission, facing opposition in city streets, on the Internet and in the halls of parliament, has suspended efforts to ratify a new international anti-counterfeiting agreement, and instead will refer it to Europe's highest court to see whether it violates any fundamental EU rights.[...]

"ACTA will not censor websites or shut them down; ACTA will not hinder freedom of the internet or freedom of speech," De Gucht said.

The European Union's executive said on Wednesday it would refer a disputed global agreement to tackle online piracy to the bloc's highest court to check whether it complies with EU fundamental rights. [...]

"We are planning to ask Europe's highest court to assess ACTA's compatibility with the EU's fundamental rights and freedoms, such as freedom of expression and information or that of protection," he told a regular news briefing. [...]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-rt-us-eu-copyrighttre81l0pm-2...

Prime Minister Tusk announced Tuesday that the government’s U-turn on the ratification of ACTA was not the result of public pressure or demonstrations in the matter.

[...] Prime Minister Tusk underlined on Tuesday that the change in his stance “is not the effect of any pressure on the government,” but merely “an effort to further analyse the supposed consequences ACTA would have in Poland it were ratified.”

[...] A possible new law on consumer protection may provide back-door access to the invigilation of Polish Internet users.

The Croatian government does not have an official position on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) at the moment and is not considering acceding to this international agreement, nor has anyone asked it to do so, Stribor Kikerec of the Foreign and European Affairs Ministry said at a round-table discussion in Zagreb on Monday. [...]

http://www.emg.rs/en/news/region/175055.html

[...] The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) will be discussed in public by the European Union (EU) Parliament next month.

The recurring issue with the ACTA treaty is the fact that no parties other than rights holders that seemingly will gain the most from it were involved in its negotiation or knew anything about it until after it was signed.

Several EU countries have distanced themselves from ACTA, while others have refused to sign it, and the European MP responsible for guiding its negotiation resigned over it.[...]

Eastern Europe's tradition of political revolt has met the digital age. This time it's not communists or food shortages fuelling fury, but an international copyright treaty that opponents say threatens freedom on the internet. [...]

« Most of the people who have gone to the streets are young and don't remember communism themselves, but Polish society as an entity remembers, » said Jaroslaw Lipszyc, the president of the Modern Poland Foundation, an organization devoted to education and developing an information society.

Acta is an international agreement created by the United States and Japan – and in some cases signed without public consultation – but excluding some European countries like Germany, Latvia, Poland and the Czech Republic and negotiated in secret with main international companies.[...]

[...]

Europe's highest court has ruled that online services such as Facebook and YouTube cannot be forced to police their customers' use of music, movies or other copyrighted material. Digital activists say it's another blow to the anti-piracy initiative known as ACTA From France, FSRN's Liam Moriarty has more.

The European Court of Justice has announced a win for privacy online in its decision that monitoring and filtering online content is unlawful and unfair.

In a ruling on the Sabam v. Netlog case (PDF), it said, « The owner of an online social network cannot be obliged to install a general filtering system, covering all its users, in order to prevent the unlawful use of musical and audio-visual work. »

The government is leaning towards freezing the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), Minister for Education, Science, Culture and Sport Žiga Turk told the press coming out of a government session. "We do not see a practical need for Slovenia to ratify it in this very moment," Turk told the press. [...]

The Economic Development Ministry said Žerjav would speak about ACTA at Friday's public presentation of opinions, which has been organised by the parliamentary EU Affairs Committee. [...]

Der Gegenwind bläst der Politik nicht nur im Netz entgegen. Der Protest gegen Acta hat eine breite Massenbewegung auf die Straße gebracht. Acta hat geschafft, was Datenschutz, Vorratsdatenspeicherung und Internetsperren nicht in diesem Umfang geschafft haben: Es demonstrierten zehntausende, wohl an die 100.000 Menschen in dutzenden deutschen Städten - und das bei eisigem Winterwetter. [...]

PM Tusk has admitted he was wrong to support the treaty

On Friday, Prime Minister Donald Tusk completed the about-face his government had started on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). [...]

“I was wrong. … It would be a sin to maintain a mistaken belief … the agreement does not correspond to the reality of the 21st century. The battle for the right to property should also respect the right to freedom.” [...]

http://www.wbj.pl/article-58076-polish-government-asks-european-parliame...

Las redes sociales no pueden ser también redes policiales. Una sentencia del Tribunal de Justicia de la Unión Europea, publicada ayer, consideró ilegal que grandes webs de internet como Facebook o Twitter instalen sistemas de filtrado para detectar cuáles de sus usuarios utilizan los servicios de la página para intercambiar o difundir material protegido por los derechos de autor. [...]

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled on Thursday that forcing hosting services to monitor and filter online content is a violation of European law, dealing another blow to the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). [...]

The decision is of large significance after recent attempts by the entertainment and music industries to force hosting services to screen all users' communications in order to block potentially copyright-infringing content. [...]

ACTA, the treaty that will let the entertainment industries dictate the legislative and punitive environment for dealing with so-called 'piracy', is losing support as it gets closer to ratification. Several countries have already backed away from approving it, and now they have been joined by Bulgaria and the Netherlands. [...]

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2152965/acta-loses-support-coun...