How to act against ACTA

This page lists different ways to take action against ACTA right now and to learn more about this dangerous agreement.

ACTA is a multi-lateral trade agreement which threatens to change the Internet as we know it and puts fundamental freedoms at risk. The European Parliament will vote on ACTA this Wednesday July 4th and has the occasion to reject it once and for all.

You will find on this page different ways you can act to defeat ACTA as a citizen.

As a citizen, the main two things to do are:
 *  contacting Members of the European Parliament 
 *  helping spread the word about ACTA .

= Contact your Elected Representatives = Contacting your Elected Representatives is the most useful thing you can do right until the wednesday's final vote in the European Parliament, last step of the procedure.

How to?
To easily get in touch with the right Members of the European Parliament, you can use our PiPhone. This tool will connected to a Elected Representatives free of charge. If you enter your country, you will be connected to an MEP speaking your language. If you need it, an example of call and the user guide are available.

You also can use Political Memory to get the contact details of a precise MEP.

Who to contact?
All MEPs will vote during the plenary session of July 4th, but it is more useful to contact first and foremost the members of the EPP, of the ECR, of the EFD, of the ALDE (except Italian, French and Dutch), of the S&D (only Spanish, British, and Portuguese), and the non-attached (NI).

<!-- The committee on "International Trade"'s (INTA) report will be voted on June 21st: ask INTA members to oppose all amendments, and to vote in favour of ACTA's clear rejection!

"Development" (DEVE) committee is about to vote its report. In its current version, DEVE's report is favourable to ACTA's ratification. Call its members to ask them to remind that ACTA was designed against the interests of developing countries and to recommend ACTA's rejection.

JURI, LIBE and ITRE committees are about to vote their reports, with the vote on ACTA as a whole (see the calendar). By means of the PiPhone, call their members to ask them to vote in accordance with La Quadrature du Net's recommendations.


 * Call MEPs from the "International trade" committee (INTA) and tell them why they must recommend the EU Parliament to reject ACTA.
 * Call MEPs from the "Civil Liberties" committee (LIBE) to tell them why ACTA undermines fundamental freedoms.
 * Call MEPs from the "Industry" committee (ITRE) and tell them how ACTA would undermine growth and innovation.
 * Call MEPs from the "Development" committee (DEVE) and remind them that ACTA was designed against the interests of developing countries.
 * Call MEPs from the "Legal Affairs" committee (JURI) to tell them how ACTA would impact EU law.

Right now, we need to contact members of the INTA committee and the ITRE committee. They are working on their report on ACTA.

You can also contact members of the LIBE committee, ITRE committee, JURI committee and DEVE committee committees to explain to them the many issues about ACTA and influence their respective reports.

'''Focus your calls on members of the political groups that so far has been the most supportive of ACTA:
 * EPP
 * ALDE
 * ECR'''

-->

General advice
Key arguments are listed on our page ACTA: to keep in mind.

The MEPs have been given a “fact-sheet” on ACTA's supposed inoffensiveness to reassure concerned citizens (that's you). You can find a debunking of these lies here.


 * If a question to which you don't have the answer comes up, don't panic. You are not expected to be an expert, only a concerned citizen. Tell the MEP you will research the answer and call back with more information, and come and ask us.
 * If you're still not comfortable with the arguments, don't give up. Ask what is the MEP's position on ACTA, and ask what are their arguments.
 * During your calls, you will speak most of the time to a Parliamentary assistant. They are generally polite and intelligent people, approach them accordingly. Being calm and courteous, tell them about your concerns, asking them to take part in the parliamentary debates and to take a stand against ACTA.
 * Don't forget to let us a little feedback of your call, either on the PiPhone, or by contacting us. That's very useful for us.
 * In general, don't hesitate to offer to call back with more information, to meet the MEP, to send documents, references, etc.
 * Sometimes, Parliamentary assistants will ask you to send an e-mail. Don't hesitate to call back later to check if they've read it and what they thought of it.

=Spread the message= Another important and complimentary way to act against ACTA is to inform people, making sure as many people as possible know about ACTA and how bad it is. It may sound obvious, but people can only want to act against ACTA if they are aware of its dangers.

You can spread resources by La Quadrature du Net and other, far and wide:
 * your personal spaces on the Internet (personal blogs, social networks, micro-blogging platforms)
 * mailing lists,
 * email,
 * forums
 * any other mean :)

Refer people to la Quadrature's webdossier on ACTA

 * Spread the ACTA dossier and refer people to it for more info.
 * The short address is: http://lqdn.fr/acta

Show people the NO to ACTA video

 * Show the NO to ACTA videos to family, colleagues, friends (not just geeks, everyone)NOtoACTA-capture.png

 
 * You can embed the video everywhere:
 * Use the following html code to insert the main version of the video
 * Or go to this page to find the code to embed other versions of the video in English, and to this page to embed versions in French.
 * To embed the Spanish subtitled version of the video for example, use this code:
 * You can also use the embed links from Youtube and Dailymotion to spread the videos.

The videos are released under a permissive and freedom-granting Creative Commons licence, so you don't have to ask to use them. :)

https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-sa/3.0/88x31.png

Use, share, remix the NO to ACTA flyer
Use our No to ACTA flyer for demonstrations, informative actions, and share it, remix it and help translate it!

Use your own words, pictures, sounds to talk about ACTA
Creating more creative bits and art and expressing oneself is another powerful way to inform other people. The power of image and creativity to explain and touch people is very strong, so this is a great way to act against ACTA if you enjoy writing, drawing, painting, making music, etc.

Here are some ideas:


 * Write an article on your blog,
 * Write an article for your school, college/university or company newspaper
 * Write to your newspapers asking why they aren't talking more about ACTA and telling them about ACTA
 * Create more videos, films, pictures, paintings against either the whole of ACTA or specific parts of the agreement
 * For instance, you can create banners, buttons, illustrations against ACTA (using images from the videos if you want) that others can use in their signatures, as avatars, to illustrate their blog articles, newspaper articles, etc.
 * If you do so, please post a link to your banner here.
 * Remix and transform already produced material, and give it a new life.
 * For instance, to the right here is a cool infographics remix of the NO to ACTA video with RoboCopyright ACTA.

=More Ways to help=

Organise events

 * Organise public events at your school, university, work place, etc.
 * Organise a discussion about ACTA, linking it to your classes or your activity
 * Show the NO to ACTA video

Publicly take a stand

 * If you are part of an NGO, consider having it publicly denounce ACTA, and telling your members about ACTA's dangers.


 * Contact well-known persons, celebrities or NGOs and ask them to take a stand.

Support la Quadrature du Net
If you can afford it, financial support is of course greatly appreciated.

You can make a donation to help La Quadrature keep on fighting ACTA and act on the other dossiers it works on.

http://lqdn.fr/support

Translate this page into your language
To help other people from different parts of the world act against ACTA, you can help translate this page.

Remember to always use the English version as the source for your translation, as it is the most up to date version. If you do so, remember to update the translated version often enough.

For collaborative translation and easy proofreading and correction, you can use an EtherPad such as http://pad.lqdn.fr/p/How-to-act-against-ACTA-LANGUAGE

ie: https://pad.lqdn.fr/p/How_to_act_against_ACTA_es

Once translated, create a new page on the wiki with your translated text, and add a link to your language to the top of this page. (You need an account to create a page on the wiki, open editing is disabled for spam protection.)

Contacting us
If in doubt or if you have any remaining question, don't hesitate to contact us :
 * use the mailing list [mailto:acta@laquadrature.net acta@laquadrature.net](to subscribe, send a blank email to [mailto:acta-subscribe@laquadrature.net acta-subscribe@laquadrature.net]. We won't use your email for anything else. )
 * send an email to [mailto:contact@laquadrature.net contact@laquadrature.net]
 * join us on our chat (or #laquadrature on irc.freenode.net)

Thanks for your help everyone :) Together, we can do amazing things! Like defeat ACTA!