Avaaz, an organization which uses the internet to campaign on various issues, submitted a petition to the European Parliament to trash the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.  The petition calls for the parliament “to stand for a free and open internet and reject the ratification of ACTA which would destroy it.”

The petition must have knocked some sense into the heads of members of the European Commission as they now admit that they made a mistake with ACTA.

ACTA garnered a good amount of negativity from Europeans as critics believe it undermines the basic freedom of expression and privacy. Protesters gathered on the streets of several European cities despite freezing temperatures to antagonize ACTA.

Maros Sefcovic, a commission vice-president, admitted that their mistake was underestimating the power of social media.  Protesters used it to spread the negative effect of ACTA, the commission should have used the same tactic in spreading the positive side of ACTA.

“We saw how our absence in the world of social media on this particular topic caused us a lot of troubles,” Sefcovic told a Brussels audience.

“I think this is a lesson for all of us that we have to be much more active and in a much more communicative mood when it comes to such sensitive topics in the future,” he added.

In February, because of the heat they were receiving from protesters, they turned over the treaty to Europe’s highest court to see if it breached any EU laws, particularly on privacy.

“We saw this huge wave of communication on the social media to which we didn’t react on time (causing) the situation where we need now to backtrack a little bit and look for reassurances from the European Court of Justice,” said Sefcovic.

Martin Schulz, the head of the European Parliament, suggested that by taking the treaty to the higher court, the commission removed the immediate chance for parliament to discuss an issue that citizens feel strongly about.