EU HAS SIGNED THE BILL.

All that's standing in the way of it passing now is the European Parliament.

Keep the bill in mind as you use the internet today.

Keep the bill in mind when you use any patented material. As per the bill, if there is some kind of copyright violation, the authorities may legally take the ORIGINAL, as well as any copies. Consider how much that may delay releases and technology. Imagine if some vaccine or new medicine was copied somehow, and due to that, all copies and originals have to be confiscated. Even if they get these originals back, tests will have been run on them, and it will be long after the time they were orignally taken, greatly delaying the release of the product.

They also give authorities the right to disclose your personal information if they even ASSUME that you are guilty of piracy. This is before any proof, if they accuse you of piracy in any way, without actually confirming that you've done anything, they may disclose your private information.

There are many other very scary regulations in the bill, including one that allows the local government of an area to create its own enforcement policy (Insert SOPA/PIPA here) to deal with copyright violations. So essentially, with the passing of this bill, SOPA and PIPA pass as well. Not to mention all of the other nasty stuff that will happen.

Just keep all of that in mind today while you go about your daily routine. If you've been sitting around thinking it won't effect you, think again.

-End message from a concerned tidus1112

Lethal has made a post on the Steam forums that is being fairly well-recieved, but could use a bit more support. Link here:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2499744&page=1

This is a petition created to petition the Obama administration to end ACTA. While our signature is on the bill, it isn't yet too late to back out from the restrictions.

Yeah, registration is kind of a pain, but this is our very lives, the very thing this country was founded on (speaking from an American standpoint here). I'm not sure if those of you from Europe or other countries will be able to sign this, but if you can, I urge you to please do. Tell all your friends and family, spread it throughout Steam, Twitter, YouTube, any other medium you can think of.

https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/end-acta-and-protect-our-right-privacy-internet/MwfSVNBK

http://www.gamingbus.com/2011/10/05/united-states-and-seven-other-countries-sign-acta/

Full text of ACTA as of the last revision on April 15th, 2011. To my knowledge, this is the current version of the bill signed by the US and Canada, and being voted on by European officials on Thursday.

View it here:

http://www.international.gc.ca/trade-agreements-accords-commerciaux/assets/pdfs/acta-crc_apr15-2011_eng.pdf