On 5th December 2013 the European Commission has launched the public consultation on whether a copyright reform should be initiated or not. The Commission simply wants to ask all Europeans if we should change copyright; if we should make it more European, more restrictive, more liberal or how should it look in the future.
Based on the suggestions that the people will send by e-mail, the Commission will decide, if the reform should be initiated or not. The time frame is highly limited – as the current term of the parliament is going to end in May, the timespan for the consultations was defined only for 2 months – from 5th December to 5th February. And the parliament will have to talk about the proposal or adopt it/reject it if the Commission will draft the proposal. So – if you want your voice to be heard in this issue, you have only one week left! But remember: The European Commission has to take your comment into consideration. And every voice counts. Each suggestion has a chance to change copyright.
So how can you participate? Simply. Download the form, read our manual how to fill it and send it to the DG Markt in the European Commission: markt-copyright-consultation@ec.europa.eu
In the last two (almost) months we could have seen an incredible interest in the participation on the copyright consultations from all over the Europe. The government of Poland expressed a high level of interest already and also published their own questions. Pirate Party Germany and the Czech Pirate Party embraced the consultations to general public by mentioning the whole issue on the main page of their websites and also by active promotion. Several initiatives were created, such as copywrongs.eu or Fix Copyright. And we have the whole NGO sector, that mobilizes volunteers...
Based on the list of current Open Consultations (aside of the Copyright Reform it is possible to send feedback to the European Commission about much other things), the one we are talking about is actually having one of the shortest time window possible. And much of the time we already had actually was during Christmas, when most of the people are usually not interested by politics at all. However - we still have the chance to participate in the reform. Raise your voice!
It seems that deadline has been extended to the 5th of march
http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/consultations/2013/copyright-rules/i...
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