Today, the European Parliament rejected the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) in a 478 to 39 vote with 165 abstentions.
Before the vote the European People’s Party requested a vote on postponement of the vote. The Parliament rejected postponement in a 420 to 255 vote with 9 abstentions.
This is a major victory for civil society, Internet freedom, access to medicine and knowledge, and innovative companies. Before people had computers, it took an effort to infringe copyright. One had to make a physical copy. Since people have computers, infringement is often just one mouse click away. Criminalizing whole societies is not the solution. It is essential that societies retain the policy space to find proportional solutions.
As an awareness project, ACTA is a big success. More and more people realize that maximizing profits at the expense of access to knowledge and space to innovate is wrong. The world deserves better solutions.
link to LQDN picture of the vote
Thanks to all!
Expect the monsters to return via IPRED1bis and IPRED2.
I bet for their return in the next 6 months.
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The Next SOPA/PIPA/ACTA:
the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement
the European Community Patent
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Economic_and_ Trade_Agreement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Community_Patent#A greement_in_December_2009.2C_and_language_issue
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