ACTA opponents document protests on social network

Europeans against Internet censorship staged mass protests across the continent on Saturday. They also took their opposition to Twitter in the latest example of a grassroots movement spanning the physical and digital worlds.

Opponents of the global Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) currently being considered by European countries argue that the treaty will deal a critical blow to free speech on the Internet, much like the recently defeated SOPA and PIPA bills in the United States. ACTA's supporters say that the agreement, already signed by a group of countries including the United States, Japan, Canada and Australia, is essential to fighting online piracy and copyright violations.

The exact scale of Saturday's protests has still not been determined, but more than 200,000 people were expected to turn out in more than 100 European cities, according to some estimates from earlier in the week. The Agence France-Presse reports that some 41,000 people rallied in Germany alone. An anti-ACTA website, meanwhile, puts that number at more than 100,000.

On Twitter, meanwhile, activist groups framed their messages and touted the ACTA protests' robust turnouts from points across Europe. Citizens posted photos and videos from the streets. And traditional news media scrambled to cover the action in real time.

The amorphous-yet-widespread uprising against ACTA has already yielded tangible results in Europe. The governments of Germany and Latvia said on Friday that they would delay signing the treaty. A German spokesperson said that the country needed "time to carry out further discussion," according to the BBC. Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia had already made similar decisions.

Last month, widespread online protest in the United States helped shut down the SOPA and PIPA bills. Check out the gallery above to see how advocates of a free Internet are hoping to do the same with ACTA in Europe.

Do you think ACTA will be defeated like SOPA and PIPA? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments.

Thumbnail mage courtesy of iStockphoto, richterfoto