Poland Backs Down on Acta Ratification

Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk halted the ratification process of an international copyright agreement, claiming more analysis was needed to the treaty.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement or Acta was signed by Poland along with other 22 countries despite huge demonstrations in Warsaw street and the hacking of governmental websites in a week of protests. Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk had insisted that his government would not "succumb to blackmail".

In a partial back-off, Tusk said that internet activists were not represented at government meetings on the deal, which were dominated by copyright owners instead.

"Consultations on ACTA were incomplete. ... This all needs to be discussed on a higher level than up until now,' Tusk said. It could not be 'ruled out' that Poland would not ultimately pass ACTA, Tusk said.

Demonstrators fear that Acta will be as pernicious as Sopa, the Stop Online Privacy Act, would have been had it not been withdrawn by the White House and the US Senate after a mass protest by hundreds of major user-generated content websites.

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the bill will deal primarily with counterfeit physical goods such as medicine but experts claim it will have broader scope and will deal with new tools targeting "internet distribution and information technology".

Over 10,000 took the streets last week across the nation to protest against censorship.

Young people held banners with slogans such as "no to censorship" and "a free internet".