Founding of European Pirates. Conference of the Young Pirates. 370 people that came to Brussels, journalists, good speakers and interesting debates. These were the major features of the last weekend.

There are many political formations in the European Parliament, similar to those that we can see in numerous national houses of deputees. We have the European People's Party – major right wing player, the Social Democrats – major alliance of many European socialist parties. We have the liberals,the greens and many more. But where are the Pirates?

The copyright consultations. They were supposed to be over by 5th February, but the deadline was surprisingly extended to 5th March. So right now there is some more time for the general public to participate in this process. All the stakeholders (that is what we use in eurotalk for interested parties) are now intensifying their efforts to bring people to the debate. That is simply great. Democracy in practice.

It is highly surprising, but yet it happened. The European Commission decided to extend the deadline for the Copyright consultations to 5th March 2014. 

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.

Our modern digital society is based on the ideas of Web 2.0. That means that everyone creates, distributes, consumes, reuses and share the culture. The former model, where authors create, distributors distribute and consumers consume is more and more a sign of the past.

But even before that, when the number of people creating content – art, movies, books etc. - was limited, a certain pattern in their creative behavior could be seen, preserved through centuries in many books, plays, movies etc.

In 2013 the world was stunned by the scandals related to tracking. We've realized that the dystopian world, where governments watch almost everyone's move is perpahs not that far from the truth we thought it can be.

Various movements, political parties and NGOs do organize conferences from time to time. So why should the Pirate meeting that took place in Maastricht this weekend be special?