The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has now been rejected by four European Parliament committees according to a press release issued by the European Union. The latest committee to urge the full parliament to reject the treaty is the Development Committee. Prior to that rejection, the Civil Liberties Committee, Industry Committee, and Legal Affairs Committee gave similar recommendations. In a vote of 19-to-one (three abstained), the Development Committee recommended that Parliament reject the treaty.

GameStop International and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe have partnered to bring PlayStation Network DLC to 1,600 retail video game stores throughout Europe and Australia. This includes stores in Australia, New Zealand, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Consumers can purchase downloadable content in stores using cash, gift cards, and in-store credits from trade-ins to buy the DLC.

If the early votes in the European Parliament related to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) are any indication, the controversial treaty will not survive a final vote later this year. Three key European Union committees have voted against ACTA: the Committee on Legal Affairs (Juri), Committee on Civil Liberties (LIBE) and the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE). All three committees expressed "opinions against Acta," according to the BBC.

Speaking to Forbes recently, CD Projekt managing director Guillaume Rambourg reiterated his company's stance on the uselessness of DRM in fighting piracy, how the authentication process associated with most DRM schemes damage the user experience, and that there is ultimately no future in its usage in the long run.

Eurogamer has two great editorials on Diablo III - one called "Always Online: What Diablo 3's Battle.net Does Right " and another called "Always Online: What Diablo 3's Battle.net Does Wrong." Both make valid points about the game and its requirement that players always be connected to Battle.net - even when playing the single-player campaign

In a lengthy interview with Eurogamer, Frogster's Lucile Le Merle tries to explain why European publisher censored the scantily clad Elin race in TERA. In South Korea the game features this female race in skimpy outfits revealing their panties, but in Europe and the U.S.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) will get a judicial review in Europe's highest court, according to the Wall Street Journal (registration required). The European Commission has asked the European Court of Justice - the highest court in Europe, to review the treaty and make sure that it is compatible with current European treaties and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

You may recall last month that European players of the MMO TERA were up in arms over the fact that the game in their region had been stripped of blood. They started a petition and took to forums to complain about it with much gusto.

According to web site Geneva Lunch, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) quietly suffered another setback today in Switzerland where the Swiss Federal Council said it would not sign the agreement. 

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) continues to run into hurdles in various parts of the world. Today those hurdles include a sharp rebuke from Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and Australia's Green party.

According to a Fox News report a top European Union official is implying that the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) will not be ratified by the European Union this summer.

"We are now likely to be in a world without SOPA and without ACTA," European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes said in a speech on Friday in Berlin, Germany.

A handful of TERA European subscribers are quite angry about blood in TERA and they have launched an online petition to complain about the lack thereof in the European version of the massively multiplayer online fantasy RPG world from Frogster.

The petitioners are upset that Frogster decided to cut down the amount of blood that appears in the European version of the game, though - as The Escapist points out - they don't seem to be upset at the other features omitted from the European release like adjustments to the game's classes, the leveling system and more.

UPDATE: Eurogamer has confirmed an even more alarming fact for fans of this release: 24 out of the 53 teams featured in the Euro 2012 expansion are "generic" unlicensed squads.

A spokesperson for the company said it would have been ideal to license all those teams but "the realities of negotiating terms with 53 separate national football associations meant that was impossible to achieve." Here is what they told Eurogamer:

The highest court in the European Union has ruled that internet service providers can be compelled by courts to turn over private information of subscribers suspected of engaging in piracy or copyright infringement. Shortly after Sweden's anti-piracy legislation, IPRED, became law in 2009, five book publishers asked a local court to force ISP ePhone to hand over personal details on a subscriber who they allege stored more than 2000 audio books on his server. They claim that 27 of those audio books infringed on their copyrighted works.

As you are probably aware, the trial of Anders Behring Breivik is in its third day in Oslo, Norway. The Norwegian man is charged with murdering 69 people at a summer camp and eight others using a bomb last year - a charge that he has pled not guilty to. Yesterday Breivik took the stand and the media pounced on what he said about gaming, along with what he wrote about it in his lengthy manifesto, along with his anti-Islamist views.

The controversial international anti-piracy agreement known as ACTA may soon be put to a bitter end in Europe. The European Parliament member responsible for monitoring the treaty’s progress through the European Union is saying publicly that it should be soundly rejected.

Epic Games and Train2Game announced over the weekend that Commando Kiwi is the winner of the Make Something Unreal Live competition, with its iOS game The Warlock of Firetop Mountain: Lost Chapters. The winner of the competition was revealed during the Gadget Show Live. Four teams presented their new iOS games based on individual books in the Fighting Fantasy series to franchise creators Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone OBE, who selected the winner. 

Remember when European Union trade chief Karel De Gucht said that Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) would be referred to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in February? Well it turns out that the infamous treaty will not go to the highest court in Europe after all. According to a report from TorrentFreak, the road to the EJC has been blocked in the European Parliament.

Paris, France-based game development studio Quantic Dream is thankful for yesterday’s announcement that the United Kingdom will offers its development community much-needed tax relief. Quantic Dream CEO Guillaume de Fondaumière went so far as to say that the UK games industry was facing a "tangible risk of collapsing" if the government hadn't intervened. de Fondaumière, who is also the chairman of the European Game Developers Federation, hopes that this will cause other governments in Europe to follow the UK's lead.

Social game studio 6Waves Lolapps has laid off its development staff to focus on publishing games. The company will apparently no longer make any games internally as part of a new reorganization. 6Waves Lolapps is currently fighting a game cloning lawsuit filed against it by mobile studio Spry Fox. Spry Fox filed a lawsuit in January claiming that 6Waves Lolapps blatantly copied its game Triple Town when it created Yeti Town.

Microsoft has hired former Sony Computer Entertainment executive Phil Harrison to lead Microsoft Studios Europe. Specifically, Harrison joins the Interactive Entertainment Business (IEB) leadership team as corporate vice president with an emphasis on growing the division’s European business. Microsoft emphasized that he will not be filling the Creative Director vacancy left by Peter Molyneux, who revealed last week that he was leaving Lionhead and Microsoft. Molyneux's role as Lionhead Studio Manager is being filled by Lionhead COO Mark Webley.

Europe's Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding has asked the European Court of Justice to sift through the particulars of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and ensure that it is compatible with fundamental rights under current European Union laws. The international treaty to combat counterfeit goods and piracy is now officially on hold until the highest court in the land makes its determinations.

The European Parliament has issued a press release entitled "What You Should Know About ACTA," detailing what ACTA is, who among the EU's member states has signed it and what has to happen for it to either be accepted or rejected.

Social networks can't be forced to police their services for copyrighted material or block users, according to a new ruling from Europe's highest court. The court said that it could not be forced to these things because that burden would drive their costs up and infringe on users' privacy. The Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) ruled on a case involving two Belgian companies at odds over copyright infringement: a music royalty collecting society called SABAM and the online social network Netlog.

Like flies drowning in a summer cooler left to thaw in the August heat, countries that once considered the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) a grand idea worth supporting are walking away from it. The latest country to step back from ACTA is Bulgaria, according to Forbes. Recently, Germany said that it would hold off on ratifying the "executive agreement" signed by our president.

Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament, has criticized the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) on German television, saying of the treaty that he does not "find it good in its current form." Schulz's comments came on the heels of protests throughout various countries in Europe - including Germany, Poland and the UK. Schulz went on to say that there is no balance between copyright protection and the individual rights of internet users, noting that it "is only very inadequately anchored in this agreement".

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.