Anastasia Denisova, might be one of the first victims and an unfortunate case of how and probably the reason why our governments and powerful companies are so eager to implement Internet censorship and the so called " anti-piracy laws" such as ACTA, SOPA, etc. This Russian case, can be registered as a warning for those, who aren't yet convinced of how harmful censorship mechanisms  and laws such as ACTA, can be for all of us citizens.

According Human Rights First (Posted: 05 Mar 2012 12:20 PM PST), Denisova was serving victims of hate Crime's violence in Russia, when Prosecutors forced her to runaway from Krasnodar, and establish residence in Moscow, where she founded the organization ETHnICS, dealing with victims of racism and similar issues. She was then bombarded with tax charges by the local authorities but she had successfuly contested all claims, when Moscow's police invaded ETHnICS, with the allegation that the group had ued illegal Microsoft products and doing so had infringed Russian anti-piracy laws.

Microsoft was contacted by ETHnICS, but the company remained indifferent and offered no help whatsoever, on the contrary, the software company filed a case against Denisova. Even though the charges were dropped in April 2010 due to the absence of material evidences, ETHnICS, could no longer function.

This Human Rights case, was both reported by the New York Times and Human Rights First organization. Because of the pressure of Human Rights organizations, according Human Rights First (Posted: 05 Mar 2012 12:20 PM PST), in 2010, Microsoft has changed its policies and practice of selective enforcing piracy laws against human rights activists. Anastasi was then, accused of new crimes: extremism and incitation to racial hatred!

For further readings and to contact Anastasia check her on twitter https://twitter.com/#!/ipostas or go to http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/

Eliana