While the fight against the SOPA and PIPA bills in the US Congress has taken a bit of a breather, new protests have sprug up over the international Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Like SOPA and PIPA, ACTA was written in part to try to combat online piracy but opponents have claimed the act is too broadly written and will result in blocked web sites.

The agreement has already been signed by a number of countries, including the US. However, there's been a growing movement by a number of people to try to stop more countries from getting on board ACTA. It's been the most active in Poland where street protests against ACTA in that country have happened earlier this week.

TechDirt reports that despite the protests, Poland's government signed onto ACTA on Thursday. In perhaps the strangest protest of all, a number of Poland's lawmakers decided to don Guy Fawkes masks in Parliament to protest the vote. These masks have become well known as one of the symbols of the hacker group Anonymous. The group has been busy launching cyber attacks on a number of web sites in the past week, in part to protest laws and agreements such as ACTA.

How things stand as of this morning...

• Fileserve – Stopped filesharing. You can only download your own files. Deleting multiple files. Banning Premium accounts. Closed Affiliate Program. Changed server location Jan 22, 2012. Taken down it's Facebook page Now using Digital fingerprinting. Files are being deleted as soon as uploaded (as Hotfile did).
• VideoBB – Closed Affiliate Program.
• Filepost – Started suspending accounts with infringing material (as Hotfile did)
• Uploaded.to – Blocked U.S. access.
• Videozer – Closed Affiliate Program.
• Filejungle – Owned by Fileserve (same as above). Testing USA IP addresses blocking.
• Uploadstation – Owned by Fileserve (same as above). Testing USA IP addresses blocking.
• 4Shared – Deleting multiple files
• EnterUpload - Down (Redirect)

It's even possible that anonymous is launching a file sharing site, but who knows if this is real, or if it will pan out.

The Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act bills before the US Congress have been losing support rapidly this week, thanks mostly to a well organized blackout of thousands of web sites on Wednesday. Yesterday, the vote on both bills were postponed indefinitely. Now the video game industry trade group, the Entertainment Software Association, has also effectively dropped its previous support of SOPA and PIPA, at least with the versions as they are currently written.

In a statement sent to Kotaku and other sites, the ESA states:

From the beginning, ESA has been committed to the passage of balanced legislation to address the illegal theft of intellectual property found on foreign rogue sites. Although the need to address this pervasive threat to our industry's creative investment remains, concerns have been expressed about unintended consequences stemming from the current legislative proposals. Accordingly, we call upon Congress, the Obama Administration, and stakeholders to refocus their energies on producing a solution that effectively balances both creative and technology interests. As an industry of innovators and creators, we understand the importance of both technological innovation and content protection and are committed to working with all parties to encourage a balanced solution.

A number of the ESA's own members, including Microsoft, NVIDIA, 38 Studios and Epic Games, have all previously revealed their own opposition to SOPA and PIPA. Indeed, the ESA itself has not been as public about its previous views on SOPA as other entertainment trade organizations such as the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America. While the official web sites for both groups mention their support of SOPA and PIPA, the ESA's web site never posted up its own views of those bills.