The European Parliament kills ACTA

Advocates of freedom of information and citizen’s rights achieved an overwhelming victory when the European Parliament rejected the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) on July 4th.

The vote against ACTA by a vast majority of the European Parliament (478 to 39) means the end of the road for this international treaty that was pushed by the entertainment industry and negotitated in secret by a small number of countries, often against national laws and parliaments. ACTA was meant to serve as a guideline for national legislators to pass more restrictive copyright laws (such as SOPA) and harder punishment of copyright infringement (in the lines of the French HADOPI).

We’d like to thank and congratulate the thousands of individuals and organisations who have campaigned against ACTA worldwide, and particularly La Quadrature du Net for their tireless work in the past months and years.