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ACTA and the case of the SOPA undead

View Photo Gallery:In Europe, protesters sporting Guy Fawkes masks rally against the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement with sentiments similar to the anti SOPA protests in the United States.

The same online furor over Internet piracy unleashed by SOPA and PIPA in the United States has now made its all black converse way to Europe, where, as the Post's Hayley Tsukuyama reports, activists and protesters are fighting to stop the ratification of a piece of SOPA like legislation known as ACTA, or the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.

Over the past few days in Europe, including in Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, a mix of protesters taking to the streets converse trainers sale and online activists co opting the tactics of Anonymous have combined forces to take down government Web sites and embarrass public discount converse mens slip on sale officials over their stance. shores, stop wondering. became a signatory to the international agreement along with 22 other European nations. because, technically, there didn't have to be.

Talk about a misdirection play. lawmakers. By structuring ACTA as an international trade agreement and cloaking the process in secrecy, it was easy for other nations around the world to quietly sign on. After all, who doesn't want to protect all of those hard working content creators out there? Government leaders failed to read the fine print, though. That means they may have missed all the passages that would transform the Internet into a type of police state controlled by the entertainment industry. When they found out what they had agreed to, there were some obvious sighs of embarrassment, with some public officials even admitting publicly that they had goofed and reversing their stance.

There's a moral here, of course. Clay Shirky, in a primer on SOPA that he gave to TED during the peak of the anti SOPA backlash, offered a stern warning: We should always remain vigilant. The entertainment industry will keep coming up with new ways to protect their old business models.

SOPA and PIPA may have died on the Congressional steps, but they are like one of Hollywood's most popular character types: zombies. If ACTA were a film, it would be called "Night of the Living Dead 2." And ACTA is not alone. There are other bills on the way that pose threats to the future of the Internet. It's also clear cheap black and white converse that the Internet will rise up to defeat any planned legislation if it's given a chance.

The SOPA undead are all around us, it will require the Internet equivalent of a silver bullet to defeat each and every one of them.

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