The European Union and 22 Member States officially signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) today. The UK was among the signatories who gathered in Japan to sign the controversial intellectual property treaty.

The United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Morocco, New Zealand and Singapore had already signed ACTA in October 2011.

The signatories commit to a raft of controversial intellectual property enforcement measures, including rules outlawing DRM circumvention, introducing criminal enforcement of intellectual property rights, and passages which have been interpreted as turning ISPs into an “unofficial copyright police force”.

However, some of the most controversial measures have been removed, including passages which would have made mere-conduit protection conditional on ISPs enforcing intellectual property rights.

The treaty still requires ratification by the European Parliament. The final vote is scheduled for June.