For those who haven't heard about this already, the ACTA, or Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, is a proposed international treaty that would more or less eradicate the internet as we know it. If passed, it would require several things:

- That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.
- That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringer's or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the Internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.
- That the whole world must adopt US-style "notice-and-take-down" rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused -- again, without evidence or trial -- of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.
Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM)
- That ISPs be forced to supply information of suspected copyright infringers at request, even without a warrant (there goes Americans' 4th amendment rights)

This treaty has actually been in the works for awhile, but was purposefully kept hidden from the public eye until the documents got leaked. Even now you'll notice that you don't see much talk about it, and any government or trade body that has been asked to disclose the documents has declined (this includes the EU and the US). Don't be fooled though, it is a threat. The DCMA was passed in nearly the exact same fashion; An international treaty that was kept secret from the public as long as possible and passed with relatively little noise. In other words, unless we take action and actually do something about this, history will repeat itself and the internet will be thrust back to what it used to be back in the '90s.

A good starting place for action is to raise awareness of this draconian piece of legislation among the public, and to write your local politicians to ask them to oppose this treaty and why they should.