Petition against online censorship

WITH NOISE LEVELS around SOPA and Megaupload almost deafening ACTA – the anti-counterfeiting trade agreement which the US has ratified with a growing number of EU and Asian countries – has been overlooked, even though it is in the throes of being pushed through the EU.
But an online petition aimed at EU lawmakers has been attracting a steady amount of signatures from the online community, with its creators aiming for two million signatures from the global online community before it is submitted to the EU in a few days.
The petition’s creators are not mincing words, and state that: “ACTA – a global treaty – could allow corporations to censor the Internet. Negotiated in secret by a small number of rich countries and corporate powers, it would set up a shadowy new anti-counterfeiting body to allow private interests to police everything that we do online and impose massive penalties – even prison sentences – against people they say have harmed their business”.
This impassioned statement has clearly resonated with large numbers of internet users across the world, as the volume of signatures continues to grow on a minute by minute basis. Whilst the petitions creators were originally aiming for 500,000 signatures, they’d surpassed this with the number of online signatures well past the 1.3 million mark. PAT PILCHER
The petition can be found at https://secure.avaaz.org/en/stop_acta/