ACTA comes out of the closet in Poland (and goes supernova)

31 points

14 years ago

Just a few days ago, Poland was following the usual trajectory of an ACTA participant: The public had no clue about the existence of the controversial international treaty, a small fraction of geeks expressed concerns that went unheard, while the government silently moved towards signing ACTA in Tokyo on January 26th.

Then something weird happened. On Friday Jan 20th the main newspaper of record (Gazeta Wyborcza) run an article about ACTA on its front page. On Jan 21st the main TV news program (Wiadomosci on TVP1) run a short, but balanced story on ACTA. The same evening, the website of Polish Parliament was defaced and subsequently taken down by its admins. Multiple government websites (Prime Minister's, President's, Ministry's of Culture) went down. Mostly due to a sudden spike in interest, but there were also rumors of "hacker attacks" (DDoS), which certainly contributed to the whole mess. On the Sunday morning of Jan 22nd, both ACTA and the alleged hacker attacks were main headlines in all the media. Reporters were interviewing experts and NGOs. Sunday talk shows were talking about ACTA.

ACTA suddenly came into mainstream public debate.

The government spokesman sought to reassure the public, that ACTA won't be rushed and will be consulted. A government minister publicly admitted that the treaty wasn't handled appropriately. Despite these attempts to calm the situation, the internet community remained in the rage mode, journalists kept digging into ACTA and many government websites were, well, unresponsive (notably the Ministry of Defense). On Monday morning (Jan 22nd) the website of the Prime Minister was spectacularly defaced: http://bit.ly/ziSMLZ (The YouTube film posted there is a spoof of the announcement of Martial Law in 1981, a grim memory for every Polish citizen old enough to remember.) Also, a street demonstration against ACTA is planned in Warsaw for Jan 24th. The number of people declaring participation on Facebook shot from 10,000 to over 30,000 in past 48h. http://www.facebook.com/events/231718760242341/

Today (Jan 23rd) the government announced that it will follow through with the signing on Thursday, but assured that the treaty still needs to be ratified by the Parliament, and before that happens (in over one year's time) the topic will be thoroughly discussed in public and consulted with all interested parties.

So while we don't have a win for ACTA opponents yet, we do have something no other country had so far: government admission that the problem exists, awareness among the wide public and battles still to be fought.

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