ACTA – ‘The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement’ is a proposed plurilateral agreement for the purpose of establishing international standards on intellectual property rights enforcement.
ACTA would establish a new international legal framework that would create its “own governing body outside existing international institutions” such as – the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) or the United Nations.
An open letter signed by many organizations, including Consumers International, EDRi (27 European civil rights and privacy NGOs), the Free Software Foundation (FSF), the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), ASIC (French trade association for web 2.0 companies), and the Free Knowledge Institute (FKI), states that “the current draft of ACTA would profoundly restrict the fundamental rights and freedoms of European citizens, most notably the freedom of expression and communication privacy.”
[UPDATE] – It seems, SOPA and PIPA were just distractions! while they signed a copyright treaty “ACTA” behind the curtain…US, Australia, Japan, Switzerland, and many EU nations have already signed this secret censorship pact last year in 2011.
Signed.