The Pirate Party has long played an important role in fighting the worst excesses of copyright in the EU. For example, when a major copyright update was being discussed, the Pirate Party MEP Felix Reda wrote an insightful and practical report on what needed changing. Most of his recommendations were ignored in the final EU Copyright Directive, but at least someone was fighting on behalf of hundreds of millions of EU citizens, whose views are generally ignored when it comes to copyright law. The outgoing Pirate Party MEP Patrick Breyer is also active in this area. He has started a new initiative that aims to tackle a widespread problem, and one that is made worse by outdated and inflexible copyright laws:
Failing to code the game in such a way that users can keep running it without publisher support is theft from the Public Domain.