14 DAY TRIAL // Things are cooling off when it comes to the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA), but now another similar agreement, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), may be signed and activist from both online and the real world are preparing to make their voices heard.
While the world is waiting to see which of the many countries sign ACTA today, Anonymous hackers released a warning message.
“ALERT: #ACTA Will Be Signed by UE & US tomorrow - EXPECT US!” the hackers wrote.
In some places protests are done only with banners, but in Poland hackers launched massive distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks on government websites to make sure that ACTA won’t be signed.
Soon after the attacks started, Anonymous officials urged hackers to stop the attacks in order to allow Polish NGOs to take a shot at negotiating with the government.
Judging by the huge success of the operations against SOPA and the Megaupload closure, we can expect a lot of defaced and shut down websites if ACTA is signed.