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Tens of thousands of people marched in protests in more than a dozen European cities Saturday against a controversial anti-online piracy pact that critics say could curtail Internet freedom.

Some 41,000 people rallied in Germany, including 16,000 in Munich and 10,000 in Berlin, against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which was negotiated between the 27-nation European Union and 10 other countries.

Many brandishing "Stop ACTA" banners and wearing Guy Fawkes masks -- a symbol of hacker-led rallies -- the mostly young protestors also braved subzero temperatures to mass in cities such as Budapest, Bucharest, Bratislava, Prague, Paris, Sofia, Tallinn, Vilnius and Vienna.

ACTA is awaiting ratification from several governments, but intense opposition led by Internet users has forced some EU states including Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to freeze their ratification process.

"We see the suspension of ratification as a victory, but we cannot over-estimate it," said the vice-president of the Czech Republic's pirate party, Mikulas Ferjencik.

"We want ACTA to be stopped completely," he added.

In Sofia, more than 3,000 demonstrators marched along major downtown boulevards, booing at the buildings of government and parliament.

Shouting "No to ACTA!" and "Mafia!", they accused the government of signing the agreement secretly and without consulting the public.

In Tallinn, where about 1,500 turned out, lawmakers widened their criticism of ACTA to an attack on the country's leadership.

"Estonia's PM Ansip has often demonstrated that government decisions in Estonia are born somewhere in hidden cellars," charged lawmaker Juku-Kalle Raid, whose party governs with Andrus Ansip's Reform Party.

"The current case with ACTA only indicated that once again a decision was to be made without discussion with the people," added the lawmaker.

The European Commission meanwhile published a document detailing the negotiation process of the pact, as it sought to defend itself against accusations of opacity.

"The EU strongly denies having provided any kind of preferential access to information to any group of stakeholders," it said.

"There are also no secret protocols to the agreement and the final text is fully public and available to all citizens on the website of the European Commission," it added.

ACTA was signed last year in Tokyo, and aims to bolster international standards for intellectual property protection, for example by doing more to fight counterfeit medicine and other goods.

But its attempt to attack illegal downloading and Internet file-sharing has sparked charges that it compromises online freedom.

"I am here because I am against censorship on the Internet, against the attempts to limit the freedom of information and against corporate interests which trample on human rights," Maya Nikolova, 27, told AFP in Sofia.

Many Bulgarian musicians were also among the crowd, claiming that they rarely get copyright royalties anyway but were ready to sacrifice whatever little they do earn for the sake of Internet freedom.

One of the Vilnius rally organisers, Mantas Kondratavicius, told AFP: "Some provisions of the treaty are too ambiguous and allow different interpretations."

"If ACTA is approved, the understanding of human rights and privacy would change and there can be no way back," warned the 21-year-old.

"I don't deny that authors should be paid but that cannot be done at the expense of privacy or freedom of speech," he stressed.

Meanwhile, some on Facebook chose to protest through blood donations.

"Blood is a life-giving power, just as information and ideas are for the web. Join our symbolic way to show that sharing is not a crime but has vital importance," its organisers said.

Besides the EU, other ACTA signatories are Australia, Canada, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland and the United States.

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Europeans protest controversial Internet pact

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Internet service providers are not broadcasters, and don't need to adhere to strict rules designed to boost Canadian content on domestic television and radio, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on Thursday.

The decision is a victory for telecommunications and Internet companies, including Bell Canada, Telus, Rogers Communications, Cogeco Cable and Bell Aliant, and a loss for Canadian performers and producers.

The communications regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), had asked the court to clarify whether companies that provide access to programming via Internet should be considered as broadcasters.

That would make them subject to the Broadcasting Act, legislation that requires broadcasters to carry some Canadian programs, in an attempt to avoid complete domination by U.S. shows. Broadcasters must also pay into funds that support the creation of local content.

"ISPs provide Internet access to end-users. When providing access to the Internet ... they take no part in the selection, origination, or packaging of content," the court ruled in its unanimous decision.

Cultural and artist groups had argued that Internet service providers should pay fees to the local content funds, and the Broadcasting Act should include ISPs, given that more and more people are now watching shows online.

Mirko Bibic, senior vice-president for regulatory and government affairs at BCE's Bell Canada unit, said if the Supreme Court had decided otherwise it would have hurt users.

"It leaves no doubt that ISPs are not broadcasters just because customers access broadcast content over the Internet," he said.

"Any other decision would have allowed the CRTC to impose a levy on ISPs' Internet revenues to pay producers for new media content, something that would harm consumers and stifle innovation. Today's decision means that can't happen."

The name of the case is Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists et al. v. Bell Aliant Regional Communications LP et al. (F.C.)(33884)

(Reporting by Randall Palmer and Alastair Sharp; editing by Janet Guttsman and Rob Wilson)

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Internet firms aren't broadcasters: court

Retail internet service providers, such as Rogers and Bell, that provide end?users with access to broadcasting over the internet are not subject to the Broadcasting Act because they have no control over the programming transmitted, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled.

Under the act, those that provide “broadcasting undertakings” are assumed to have some measure of control over programming.

However, internet service providers (ISPs) that provide the mode of transmission to broadcasting, both video and audio requested by end-users, "take no part in the selection, origination, or packaging of content," the top court said in a decision Thursday.

ISPs merely act as a conduit for information provided by others, and so cannot themselves be held to communicate the information, the court ruled.

"We’re very pleased that the court made the right decision," said Leigh-Ann Popek, a spokeswoman for Rogers, told CBC News in an email.

The appellants, which included the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists, the Canadian Media Production Association, the Directors Guild of Canada and Writers Guild of Canada, had argued that ISPs form part of a single broadcasting system that is subject to regulation under the act.

They based their argument on the 1978 Capital Cities Communications Inc. v. Canadian Radio-television Commission (CRTC) case.

Under a 1968 version of the act, the CRTC had amended Rogers Cable’s licence, allowing it to delete and substitute the television advertisements in the U.S. broadcasts it received before distributing them to Canadian viewers.

The American broadcasting stations attempted to sever the function of receiving television signals from the distribution or retransmission of those signals within a particular province. The court rejected this severance of reception and distribution, ruling it was a single system coming under federal jurisdiction.

In making the ruling Thursday, the top court upheld a 2010 Federal Court of Appeal decision.

In a 1999 report, the CRTC concluded that the term “broadcasting” included programs transmitted to end-users over the internet, but that it was not necessary to regulate broadcasting services provided through the internet.

It exempted these “new media broadcasting undertakings” from the requirements of the Broadcasting Act. However, in 2008, after public hearings, the CRTC revisited the exemption.

One of the issues raised was whether internet service providers — ISPs — were subject to the act when they provided end-users with access to broadcasting through the internet.

The respondents in the Supreme Court case included Bell Aliant Regional Communications, Bell Canada, Cogeco Cable Inc., MTS Allstream Inc.,Rogers Communications Inc., TELUS Communications Company,Videotron Ltd. and Shaw Communications Inc. The CRTC had intervenor status.

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Internet providers not subject to Broadcasting Act

'Governments have always struggled to legislate for the online world'. Photo: Nic Walker

Legislators with little knowledge of internet privacy will do more harm than good.

THE protest against the American Stop Online Piracy Act recently, where Wikipedia and 7000 other websites went dark for 24 hours, made two things plain.

First, online activism can be effective. Before the protest, 31 members of Congress opposed the act. After the protest, that number swelled to 122. The bill died overnight.

More importantly, the protest emphasised that the internet is not the Wild West. Domestic laws and international treaties pervade everything we do online. And bad laws can cause profound damage.

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The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is an example of legislative over-reach. SOPA would have given the US government broad powers to shut down access to foreign sites that were suspected of hosting material that breached copyright. This would have given governments the power to interfere with the internal workings of the internet. Such a power would have been an unconscionable threat to free speech.

Yet SOPA is not alone. The internet is surprisingly vulnerable to laws that, with good intentions or bad, have the potential to stifle online liberties. Take for instance, the European Union's proposed ''right to be forgotten''. Changes to data protection laws now being considered by the European Parliament would give internet users the power to force websites to delete information about them.

There would be privacy benefits from this law. No question it would be lovely if we could make websites remove embarrassing photos or uncomfortable facts years after we uploaded them.

And yes, we need to keep pressure on social networks to protect our privacy. Too many companies are reckless with user data. Yet the EU's plan goes way too far. A legislated ''right to be forgotten'' would be, like SOPA, a threat to freedom of speech. These new rules would, according to the American legal scholar Jane Yakowitz, ''give EU residents an unprecedented inalienable right to control and delete facts that were once voluntarily communicated''.

In the age of social media we all happily put information about ourselves in the public domain. A right to be forgotten is actually an obligation for others to forget things they've been told.

Apart from being unworkable (erasing stuff from the internet is a lot more complicated than politicians seem to believe), this new obligation would envelop the internet in a legal quagmire.

The law would turn every internet user into a potential censor, with a veto over everything they've ever revealed about themselves. Every time media organisations referred to freely obtained information, they would have to be sure they could prove they did so for a ''legitimate'' news purpose. This would create enormous difficulties for journalism. Censorship to protect privacy is just as dangerous as censorship to prevent piracy.

But unlike SOPA, there has been no outcry about these new rules. No blackout of popular websites, no mass petitions.

SOPA was driven by American politicians in the thrall of an unpopular copyright lobby. The European data protection rules are being driven by social democrats claiming to protect people's privacy. And, in 2012, privacy is a value that many people claim to rate above all others.

By contrast, free speech seems daggy and unpopular. Even our self-styled civil liberties groups have downgraded their support for freedom of speech. Now other rights - privacy is one, the right not to be offended is another - are seen as more important. So these new laws could slip through with disastrous consequences.

Should Australians care what the European Parliament does? Absolutely. The big internet firms are global. If a legislature in one country or continent changes the rules of the game, those firms have to comply. The easiest way to comply is by making global policy changes, not regional ones.

And regulations introduced overseas have a habit of eventually being introduced in Australia. Already our privacy activists are talking up the EU scheme.

Whatever the EU decides about a right to be forgotten, it will have significant effects on the online services we use in Victoria.

Free speech isn't the only problem with the EU's proposed privacy laws. As Jane Yakowitz points out, people trade information with corporations all the time - for discounts or access to free services. No one compels us to share stuff on the internet. We share because we think we'll get something out of it. The new right to be forgotten would make such trades virtually impossible. It could cripple the information economy overnight.

Governments have always struggled to legislate for the online world. Not only do politicians have little understanding of the technological issues, but the internet doesn't take very well to regulation: according to one old tech saying, ''the net interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it''. So legislators over-compensate.

The internet is complex, borderless and dynamic. Laws are inflexible and heavy-handed. Too many attempts to protect privacy or combat copyright infringement take a brickbat to freedom of expression and internet liberties.

Chris Berg is a research fellow with the Institute of Public Affairs.

Twitter: @chrisberg

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Internet laws a sledgehammer approach to privacy

Internet users in Iran are reporting error messages when trying to access major websites from inside the country Friday.

Gmail, Google Reader and Facebook are just some of the blocked sites, according to The Washington Post.

[More from Mashable: Grammys 2012: Who to Follow on Twitter]

Some Iranians are guessing their connectivity woes are being caused by the Iranian government. The country celebrates the 33rd anniversary of the Islamic Revolution from mid-February until March every year. The government may be restricting Internet access during this politically charged event to prevent anti-government demonstrations from forming online.

All the websites being plagued by error messages use HTTPS, a more secure version of the HTTP protocol that helps keep Internet users' information private.

[More from Mashable: Twitter: Now You Can Tweet By Satellite]

Other encrypted sites are also being blocked, including that of proxy servers, which some Iranians use to circumvent government blocks of Western websites, according to The Verge. Some are fearing this mass block is the first stage of Iran's "national Internet," a government plan to isolate digitally savvy Iranians from the rest of the Internet.

The Internet has played a vital role in Iranian political rallies in the recent past. Mass protests after a disputed election in 2009 were dubbed the "Twitter revolution" because protesters used the social network to organize themselves. The Internet slowed to a crawl during 2010's anniversary of the Islamic Revolution. And Iranian protesters used the Internet again last year to coordinate solidarity marches with Arab Spring demonstrations in the Middle East.

Do you think governments should shut off encrypted websites before potentially explosive events? Sound off in the comments below.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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Iran Reportedly Blocking Internet