Germany has announced that it will not ratify the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) after its justice ministry voiced concerns about the international agreement. This does not mean that Germany won't eventually sign it - it simply means it has no plans to sign it "right now." A foreign ministry spokesperson told the AFP that the delay was to "give us time to carry out further discussions." Further details on what those discussions would be about were not disclosed at the time of this writing.

SaveTheInternet points out some interesting information dug up by Media Matters about where a lot of big media money has gone and why some lawmakers pushed so hard for the passage of SOPA and PIPA. While their analysis can't show that the money was directly related to PIPA and SOPA, it certainly shows the level of influence money has in Washington.

David Martin, a British MEP from the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) party, has been asked to draw up the European Parliament's opinion on ACTA, after French Socialist MEP Kader Arif quit the position in protest of the lack of transparency related to ACTA's progress in the European Union Parliament.

"I want the Parliament to have a facts-based discussion and not a debate around myths," Martin said in a statement. "That is why I want to have an open debate with all concerned.”

ACTA protests around Europe have caused various European Union governments to suspend the endorsement of the anti-copyright infringement treaty. EU members Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic have all announced that they will delay ratifying the treaty. We've already mentioned the protests in Poland (where even members of Poland's government got involved by donning Guy Fawkes masks in parliament) and the Czech Republic's opposition, but we haven't talked about what the Slovakian government thinks of ACTA.

The Czech Personal Data Protection Office (UOOU) has written on its official web site that the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is "unbalanced with regard to the existing legal guarantees of individuals´ rights."

In addition, Czechoslovakian Prime Minister Petr Necas (Civic Democrats, ODS) announced on Monday that the Czech Republic would suspend ratification of the treaty to further analyze its impact on the country's citizens.

Romania's Prime Minister has resigned after three weeks of protests related to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and anti-austerity measures. While the ACTA protests probably didn't help, most believe the protests related to serious cuts in government jobs and pay, as well as tax hikes were the final nail in the coffin for the PM. Romania, which is the second poorest country in the European Union, is facing a debt crisis similar to that of Greece. And like Greece, Romania appealed to the International Monetary Fund to avoid an economic collapse.

We have talked about the Anti-Counterfeit Trading Agreement (ACTA),  but not everyone knows what is in the treaty or  how it could ultimately affect the average Internet user.  Some confusion on ACTA has been facilitated by people's fear of it, protests, and the way the treaty was negotiated in secret. Luckily there are two articles that can help the average user understand just what ACTA contains.

Malta's Labour Party spokesman Michael Farrugia has told Malta Today that the Anti-Counterfeit Trading Agreement (ACTA) is too vague and, as a result, could do damage to generic pharmaceutical companies in Malta and Europe and infringe on Internet freedoms. He also complains about how the treaty was negotiated in a secretive and exclusive manner.

Even as the Pirate Party petitions the Australian government to rescind its ratification of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), party leaders admit that it's probably too late to cause a sea change on that front.

Malta's Alternattiva Demokratika (AD) party joins the European Greens in their call to discard the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). The European Greens recently commissioned a study to see how ACTA squared with the European Convention on Human Rights and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (ECHR).

While some politicians in Poland believe that signing the ACTA treaty was a smart idea - even in the midst of actual protesting in the streets (some put the number of protesters at 20,000 people), some have sided with the public. The picture to your left - found on TechDirt - shows that some politicians in the country have some sense. Today a whole gaggle of politicians donned famed Guy Fawkes masks in the Parliament to protest the vote.

Electric Playground recently caught up with Hal Halpin, President and founder of the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA), to talk about the online battle to stop the passage of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Halpin talks about how the online protest last week slowed down the momentum of both SOPA and PIPA, and why these bills aren't quite dead yet.

Check out the video to your left.

[Full Disclosure: GamePolitics is an ECA publication.]

While the European Union has officially signed ACTA - it's not all bad news for those worried about this anti-piracy treaty negotiated in secret. For one, it is an international treaty, which means that it has to be approved by the European Parliament.

Joel Kelsey, a top political adviser for Free Press, has written an editorial urging U.S. lawmakers who have taken money from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to give it back. Writing over at SaveTheInternet.com, Kelsey makes this request in light of recent comments from MPAA president Chris Dodd made to Fox News. In case you don't remember:

This Politico story points out that anti-piracy legislation may be the hottest of hot potatoes in the 2012 election cycle, and while lawmakers promise progress in the not-too-distant future, the likelihood of anything getting through either legislative bodies is highly unlikely.

“Going into an election year, there’s going to be a lot of [reluctance] to do anything that can end up being an unnecessary battle,” a Republican House aide told POLITICO. “It became a political hot potato.”

While a petition asking the White House to dump ACTA is well intentioned, as TechDirt points out, it misses the mark for a number of reasons. The real question Americans should be asking is did the President follow the Constitution when he unilaterally had his administration negotiate this international treaty and did he have the authority to do it without involving lawmakers?

Hackers under auspices of the AntiSec group claimed responsibility for hacking OnGuardOnline.gov, the U.S. federal government's online security website, in protest of various internet-related legislation including ACTA, SOPA and PIPA. OnGuardOnline.gov is managed by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in cooperation with 14 other agencies.

Officials from the Polish government say that they are steadfast in their support of ACTA, despite the threats from Anonymous. The hacktivist group attacked various Polish government sites over the weekend in hopes of deterring the country from supporting the international agreement on counterfeiting and IP protection. Polish government minister Michal Boni, defended the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, saying that signing the international treaty would not hamper Internet usage. He added that Poland still plans to sign it on Thursday, as planned.

Another petition launched at the White House's official site asks the Obama Administration to end its support for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA. From the text of the petition created on January 21:

Silicon Republic points out something we have been talking about here for awhile: SOPA and PIPA are bad, but ACTA is much more dangerous and is about to be ratified by countries in Europe. Several European countries including Ireland, will throw their support behind ACTA later this week, joining the US, Australia, Korea, New Zealand, Mexico, Jordan, Morocco, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and Canada.

An attack on multiple government web sites in Poland by hacktivist group Anonymous has made the Polish government rethink its position on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), the negotiated-in-secret anti-piracy framework. (ACTA) is a treaty that would institute international standards regarding intellectual property protection enforcement. In October of last year the U.S., Japan, Australia, Canada, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Korea agreed to move forward with the proposal during a meeting in Tokyo.

While U.S. politicians get ready to return to fight over SOPA, new legislation to combat file-sharing in Spain has been approved. The legislation, called the "Sustainable Economy Law" (LES), was specifically designed to stop Spanish Internet users from accessing file-sharing sites either by blocking them at the ISP level or by shutting them down completely.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) will be signed on October 1 at a ceremony in Japan, according to a report in After Dawn. According to a press release from the Japanese government, signatories will include Japan, the EU, the United States, Australia, Canada, South Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and Switzerland.

Nintendo CEO and president Satoru Iwata took a shot at hand-held smartphone devices this week during a speech at GDC. Iwata said that smartphone manufacturers do not value video games as much as they should with many seeing the quantity of apps as more important than the quality.

"We want consumers to appreciate the premium value of software through our platforms. Although Microsoft and Sony are different to us, I believe we all share this idea 100 per cent. We demonstrate a high value of game software. “However, smartphones and social platforms are not at all like ours. These platforms have no motivation to maintain a high value of game software. For them, content is just created by someone else."

“Quantity is how they profit. The value of game software does not matter to them.”

He went on to say that the amount of games creates a higher risk of failure and puts developers' jobs on the line:

According to a C|Net report, the Obama administration has drafted a new set of proposals to deal with intellectual property infringement online that it plans to send to the U.S. Congress very soon. The administration is also applauding  the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which it says will "aid right-holders and the U.S. government to combat infringement" once it enters into effect.

As the C|Net report notes, the 92-page report penned by intellectual property enforcement coordinator Victoria Espinel reads as if it was ghost-written by lobbyists groups. There is some interesting data in there like the fact that the number of FBI and Homeland Security infringement investigations jumped 40 percent from 2009 to 2010, praise for ACTA, and details on various law enforcement operations.

Are you horrible at first-person shooters? Do your friends call you "butter foot" and other unsettling in-game terms when you play online? There may be help for you thanks to FPS Trainer, an online service that combines an AI-controlled coaching technology and advice from "world class players" to teach players the fundamentals of first-person action games.

According to Play2Improve, fewer than 40 percent of players choose to play online because they are "intimidated by the ferocious talent and skill shown by some of the most dedicated players." FPS Trainer offers gamers the chance to learn the basics of playing FPS games online and teach more experienced players some secret techniques to bring their online play to a higher level.

Indie musician Dan Bull isn’t afraid to take on politicians, fellow musicians or difficult subjects (such as file sharing and copyright). His latest music video, set the to the strains of Jay-Z’s Death of Auto-Tune, is entitled Death of ACTA, referring, of course, to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.

Full lyrics to the song, featuring lines such as “I'm just a citizen that's teaching you a lesson,
for restricting my freedom of expression, Yes, and deep packet inspection? squeeze that up your rectum, If your postman did that to you you'd be having him sectioned,” can be viewed on TechDirt.

The Internet Industry of Australia (IIA) has given a nod approval to the recently released, near-final draft of the Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement (ACTA). The group representing ISPs in Australia praised much of what was missing from the document like the "three strikes rule," which would have required copyright infringers be barred from the internet after three infractions.

The IAA said that the new ACTA draft sets "a multi-country standard for copyright enforcement" while supporting "the right of digital content owners" to protect their intellectual property. Naturally, scrutiny from the parliament is a must before it is ratified by Australia.

"Subject to reviewing the final ACTA text, the IIA takes comfort from our initial reading that it will neither extend nor restrict the legal rights of users, ISPs, other intermediaries or content rights holders in Australia," IIA chief executive, Peter Coroneos, said in a statement.

Ars Technica reports that a near-final draft of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has been released online (PDF). The document reveals that many of the provisions that U.S. negotiators wanted have either been watered down, weakened or omitted.

The three-year international treaty negotiations prove that the international community cannot agree on a lot of issues when it comes to copyright infringement enforcement, piracy, and more. While U.S. negotiators probably hoped that the rest of the participants in the treaty would adopt DMCA-like rules, there seemed to resistance and differences in opinion on a myriad of issues.

Even those individuals that have fought against the mostly-secret international treaty negotiations see this near-final draft as impotent:

The Commerce Department's Internet Policy Task Force is opening up the topic of copyright protection and piracy prevention to the general public, The Hill reports.

The Task Force issued a "Notice of Inquiry" today seeking input from stakeholders, Internet services providers, and consumers on how to protect copyright holders while maintaining the free flow of information online. The Task Force will collect comments from all sides and create a report to be submitted to the Obama administration. Naturally, there is no mention of ACTA, but hopefully citizens for and against overly aggressive copyright rules will speak up while they can.

Interested parties are asked to file comments by e-mail.

Source: The Hill