Central Europe Countries Continue to Oppose ACTA

tykev writes "The Czech government suspended the ratification process of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, ACTA, said Prime Minister Petr Necas today. The government wants to further analyze the issue. There were a number of public demonstrations against ACTA in several Czech towns, and some Czech Euro MP's oppose ACTA as being 'completely wide of the mark'. Earlier, Poland announced its intention to suspend the ratification process as well. In the meantime, the website of the ruling Czech Civic Democratic Party was attacked and defaced by Anonymous who also publicly released personal data of the party's members."

Comments

what's futile is this :

[unity100]

What we need to do is strike back at the politicians and remind them that they are serving the interests of all the population

they know very well who they should be serving. they are NOT choosing to serve who they should be serving. instead, they choose whomever pays them.

the difference of the central european countries is that, there is still a lot of generations currently at the age of running government, corporations etc, who has grown up during the communist era with at least some ideals. you wont find those in anglo-american countries. hence, the opposition from central europe.

Protests in many, many European cities

[DerCed]

What is also quite impressive are the protests planned by Pirate Parties and others in numerous cities all over Europe (+ some other continents). Many events are to be held this Saturday, February 11st. The map looks absolutely breath-taking:
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=212120558776447282985.0004b7b33e16f13c710c7&msa=0

Well of course not, they're not IP dependant

[poity]

Western Europe is the major source of intellectual property. Look at WIPO's top applicant nations - Germany, France, UK, Netherlands. Look at IMDB's top film making countries - France, UK. Look at the fashion world where you're nobody unless your're based in London, Paris, or Milan. In addition, Central and Eastern Europe are the conduits (if not the source) for many counterfeits. With ACTA, those governments would bear a share of the burden in protecting someone else's economy while their own not-quite-so IP-reliant economies see no benefit. So they'd go from not spending money enforcing someone else's IP while getting economic benefit from those citizen who profit from counterfeit, to spending money enforcing someone else's IP while killing off a pretty nice influx of money. Western EU countries are going to have to offer much more trade incentives to get what they want, but then by increasing trade incentives to get IP enforcement, they will just be switching from one hose siphoning money from them to another hose siphoning money from them.