Protests against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) have taken place across Europe during the last week, culminating in over 100 coordinated events on Saturday 11th February. Protestors hope to convince members of the European Parliament that they shouldn’t ratify ACTA.

Australia, Canada, the European Union (represented by the European Commission, and the European Union Presidency), Japan, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerlandand the United States were participants in the ACTA negotiations.

Although Trade Minister Craig Emerson signed ACTA on October 1st 2011, it has not been ratified by Australia yet. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) says that “participants in ACTA intend to use the treaty to establish a new standard of intellectual property (IP) enforcement to combat the high levels of commercial-scale trade in counterfeit and pirated goods worldwide” and “the implementation of ACTA in Australia will not require any changes to existing Australian laws”.

Federal Parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Treaties received 10 submissions about ACTA by the cut-off date on January 27th 2012. These will be considered when the committee drafts a report to parliament.

Opponents such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation say ACTA is “designed to broaden and extend existing IP enforcement laws to the internet” and if the treaty is a fair and balanced improvement to existing IP law, why was it “negotiated in secret, bypassing national parliaments and the checks and balances in existing international organisations?”. British technology writer Glynn Moody described ACTA as a “completely pro-copyright industry, anti-end user document”.

Polish prime minister Donald Tusk has suspended the ratification process in his country and the French member of European Parliament who was in charge of negotiating about ACTA recently resigned, telling The Guardian that ACTA ‘ “goes too far” by potentially cutting access to lifesaving generic drugs and restricting internet freedom’.

If ACTA isn’t ratified by even just one of the twenty-seven European Union (EU) member states then it is null and void across the EU. ACTA must be ratified by six parties to the treaty for it to be enforceable.