FFF

Courtesy of the Federal Trade Commission

Photographer: Jonathan B. Morgan

The Federal Trade Commission building

as seen from 6th St., NW, in Washington D.C.

In another Friday cyberspace hit now called "FFF" for "FuckFBIFriday," Anonymous took down the website of the Federal Trade Commission along with several affiliated websites, leaving a message to the U.S. government and other world leaders on the dangers posed by the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA.

Raw Story reports that ACTA is supported by the FTC, "which essentially extends often-criticized provisions of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act to numerous foreign nations."

“You really want to empower copyright holders to demand that users who violate IP rights (with no legal process) have their Internet connections terminated?” they [Anonymous] asked. “You really want to allow a country with an oppressive Internet censorship regime to demand under the treaty that an ISP in another country remove site content?”

At the hacked website Friday morning, Anonymous described ACTA as far worse than SOPA (or the Stop Online Piracy Act) which applies only to the United States (and is presently "hibernating" according to RT).   “ACTA will further spread the contagion of stricter copyright enforcement worldwide, at the expense of our essential liberties and basic freedoms of speech, expression and privacy,” reports RT on the message content.  “ACTA is a downright shitty act. We must kill it. With fire.”  RT writes that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a non-profit internet advocacy group that also opposes ACTA and SOPA agrees that the dangers posed by ACTA are as serious as Anonymous asserts.

The US, EU, Switzerland, Japan, Australia, the Republic of Korea, New Zealand, Mexico, Jordan, Morocco, Singapore, the UAE and Canada are all currently negotiation the verbiage of the ACTA. Attacking the cloak of secrecy that has masked public perception of the bill so far, Anonymous says “It raises substantial questions of governmental transparency as well as democratic accountability, with participating leaders deliberately bypassing their constituents by participating in this shady, backroom process.”

“Because ACTA is an international agreement binding under the general principles of international law, national legislatures would be unable to change domestic copyright law if they eventually feel the ACTA regulations to be too strict. A country would have to literally withdraw from the treaty first, a historical rarity,”explains Anonymous.

Anonymous also objected to FCC's poor enforcement of the Do Not Call Registry and Google's new data sharing plan effective March 1st.

Below an Anonymous ACTA Announcement:

Last Friday, Anonymous took down the C.I.A.'s website.