Protesters take action over ACTA

27th January 2012

Thousands took to the streets in cities across the country this week to demonstrate public anger over a controversial anti-internet piracy law.

In Krakow some 10,000 protestors gathered in the city centre in a spontaneous protest, while a further 5,000 rallied in Wroclaw. The central town of Kielce saw arrests made as cars were vandalised and demonstrators clashed with the police.

Earlier in the week computer hackers broke into a number of official websites, including those of the prime minister, the government and the foreign ministry, in a series of cyber attacks that took many of the websites offline.  

The focus of the anger was the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which the government signed on Wednesday night. ACTA aims to harmonise intellectual property rights for a variety of products including music and films, but has been accused of shackling the freedoms of information and expression on the internet.

Banners carried in the demonstrations stated “no to censorship” and called for a “free internet” and showed the general public’s feelings towards the decision.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of main opposition party Law and Justice (PiS), joined the debate by calling for a referendum on ACTA. Mr Kaczynski said the party would soon set its proposal for a vote before parliament.

The scale and passion of the protests caught the government off guard, but it stood by its decision to sign the agreement. “We believe that theft on a massive scale of intellectual property is not a good thing,” said Radek Sikorski, the foreign minister, in a television interview.

The government also claimed ACTA posed no threat to internet freedom.

“Now we have signed the agreement we should make the effort to clarify it and to dispel the myths surrounding ACTA,” Michal Boni, the minister responsible for digitalisation, told the radio station Trojka.

“We need to show that the government has no intention of restricting freedom on the internet,” he continued.

The minister added that the government will attempt to “clarify” the ACTA issue before the agreement goes before parliament for ratification.

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