23 February 2012

About ACTA

I am not sure how it happened, but while I was away, somehow the Romanian society got interested in ACTA and the topic became hot and trendy, trendy enough to rally all hipsters in a try to "save the Internet". Which is not a bad thing, the Internet is in big need for more freedom and protection. You see the topic on the news, magazines and TV, people talk about it... so yesterday evening a magazine organized a debate at a fancy cafés "ACTA and the Internet. The end or the beginning of an era?"

It was a high-level debate, having as guests a jurist, Bogdan Manolea, a philosopher, Constantin Vică and a jazzman, Mihai Iordache. The moderator, the magazine's editor-in-chief, Mircea Vasilescu, unable to find an ACTA supporter for a balanced debate, had to play the "devil advocate" and try to heat the discussion, otherwise everybody, speakers and audience, would have slammed ACTA. Tot that slamming ACTA is undeserved :)
There were a bit over 50 people in the audience, some press, video recording, so I expect it to get echoed. The topic moved from ACTA to copyright in general and freedom on the Interned, with some nuances: the musician having some interests in copyright revenues, the lawyer having sympathy for (not-software) patents in some cases and the philosopher being the most radical, and probably closer to my own point of view. It was mostly about artists, but at the end it touched a bit the pharmaceutics industry, which everyone agreed is a bigger evil, deserving a separate talk.


  1. We have same problem in Poland. After many protests and even DDoS atacks of public websites (but it wasn't big factor at all), government started to regret it's choice but they will probably won't cancel the agreement to stay "reliable". I can even agree with their argument but they should also note that they know hardly anything about the internet.

    1. we didn't have DDoS or anything else else illegal, just people demonstrating in the street and a large media campaign