Dear all, as most of you probably know, ACTA (the "Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement") which is currently being negotiated is (despite its name) likely to seriously impact the internet.

For example, from the draft text that has been published in April [1], we see that a provision has been suggested that would require participating countries to give their courts the authority to issue an "interlocutory injunction ... against an intermediary whose services are being used by a third party to infringe an intellectual property right." [1] https://www.ige.ch/fileadmin/user_upload/Juristische_Infos/e/acta_text_for_p...

In other words, if this suggested text becomes international law, it implies that copyright holders can get injunctions against ISPs to prevent the illegal distribution of their content via the ISP's networks.

The draft Agreement even explicitly requires the participating countries to make the "enforcement procedures" so that they "permit effective action" against copyright infringement that takes place via the internet.

At the last round of negotiations (which took place in New Zealand in April) a group of activists and InternetNZ (a large provider) organised a parallel event "PublicACTA" in the same venue as the ACTA negotiations, with the purpose to inform the public and elicit discussions, see http://publicacta.org.nz Apparantly this event was a big success.

They're suggesting that what they did could be continued with an event in a similar spirit here in Switzerland where the next round of negotations is planned to take place (probably in Geneva, sometime in June, we don't know the exact date yet).

Who would be willing to help organize and/or contribute funding to such an event?

Greetings, Norbert