ACTA, a treaty aimed at harmonizing copyright enforcement globally, has been mired in controversy from its inception not least since its formulation has taken place behind closed doors. Critics fear it would introduce more online censorship and increased surveillance of Internet users.

“We are planning to ask Europe’s highest court to assess whether ACTA is incompatible – in any way – with the EU’s fundamental rights and freedoms, such as freedom of expression and information or data protection and the right to property in case of intellectual property,” said De Gucht.

During the past few weeks protests against ACTA have swept across Europe, with citizens taking to the streets in several major cities. De Gucht said he understands why people are worried.

“I share people’s concern for these fundamental freedoms. I welcome that people have voiced their concerns so actively – especially over the freedom of the internet. And I also understand that there is uncertainty on what ACTA will really mean for these key issues at the end of the day,” the trade chief said.

“So I believe that putting ACTA before the European Court of Justice is a needed step. This debate must be based upon facts and not upon the misinformation or rumor that has dominated social media sites and blogs in recent weeks.”

De Gucht insists that ACTA will not lead to the censorship or closing down of websites and will not hinder freedom on the Internet or freedom of speech, but said that the referral to the European Court of Justice would help “cut through this fog of uncertainty.”

So far the ACTA agreement has been signed by 22 EU member states, but several countries including Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, Bulgaria and Czech Republic have backed away (at least temporarily) from ratifying the agreement following the recent protests.

Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and the United States signed ACTA last October, leaving acceptance in the European Parliament and EU member states as the final hurdle before it goes into effect. The Court of Justice’s view on ACTA’s compatibility with EU’s fundamental rights and freedoms will be key for many lawmakers.

Previously researchers concluded that ACTA does indeed violate human rights. Whether the Court of Justice will reach a similar conclusion has yet to be seen, but in two previous rulings on anti-piracy filters the court placed the rights of the general public above those of copyright holders.

Source: European Court of Justice To Examine ACTA For Rights Breaches

from TorrentFreak

Gabe Newell: For Posterity by *G-e-e-r-s

If you’re still lost in the world of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim three months on from launch, Bethesda and Prima Games have teamed together to help you out, releasing a World Interactive Map for the epic RPG. While we saw third party effort Dragon Shout hit the App Store soon after Skyrim‘s release, the official app is an altogether sleeker affair, with the same pin-dropping ability on a detailed map zoomable to 3200x. It’s universal for iPhone and iPad, though we couldn’t get it to work on our iPad 2, with a “Please wait while loading data” message never showing any signs of life. The app is free, but that’ll only get you a view of the overworld and its 9 capital cities. Locations, points of interest, and interior maps are all hidden…

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from The Verge – All Posts

Barnacle Ceiling Lamp by ~Kilh

WINTER NEVER CAME.

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from The Oatmeal – Comics, Quizzes, & Stories

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from Ufunk.net

After beginning as an academic project back in 1996, VLC hit version 1.0 in 2009 and today it has reached 2.0. VLC — one of the best-known, catch-all media players out there — has plenty of major improvements across its Windows, OS X, and Linux variants to go along with that big version number bump. The most noticeable changes come to Mac users; we’ve detailed in-depth the OS X version’s interface improvements in our hands-on with the release candidate, but suffice it to say that the experience has been completely re-tooled with fullscreen support in Lion and a new one-window layout.

Other than the UI changes in OS X, the changelog says that decoding in all flavors of the app is now improved on multi-core and mobile systems,…

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from The Verge – All Posts

This beautiful animated short made the rounds about a month ago, but we got to thinking about it again, and thought we’d share. The film is called No Robots, and it’s directed by Yung-Han Chang and Kimberly Knoll, students at San Jose State University. Makes you think, doesn’t it? Or at least feel.

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from The Verge – All Posts

There have been plenty of rumors surrounding iPad 3 specs and launch date. The iPad 3 is rumored to have a Retina display, upgraded cameras, LTE, possibility of Siri, and a quad-core processor. Apple is rumored to announce the iPad 3 on March 7th, and ship it a few days later.

Tonight, Apple Daily has leaked some pretty interesting pictures of what they say is the iPad 3. They have posted a supposed over-head image of the iPad 3, revealing slightly more tapered edges and redesigned camera…(…)
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