The 2014 European elections haven't been kind to the various Pirate Parties, which campaign for digital rights, free speech and decriminalisation of filesharing. In their native Sweden, the Pirates lost both their MEPs, dropping from a 7.1 percent vote share to just 2.2 percent. In Finland where high-profile activist Peter Sunde was campaigning, the party balloted just 0.7 percent. In Britain, the three Pirate Party candidates secured just 8,597 votes combined -- just 0.5 percent

Across Europe, mainstream political parties have stolen Pirate policies wholesale

In Greece, the Netherlands, Austria, Slovenia, Spain and Hungary, the story was similar -- Pirate Party candidates failed to make it out of the starting blocks. The movement's best results -- a solid 4.78 percent and 4.23 percent in the Czech Republic and Luxembourg respectively, failed to translate into MEPs. Only in Germany was a Pirate successful in securing a parliamentary seat. 27-year-old Julia Reda polled 424,510 votes (1.4 percent of the total vote) and will be the sole representative of the European Pirate Party in the EU parliament for the next five years.

Despite the movement's founder and loudest voice, Rick Falkvinge, claiming on his blog that the results are a "strong improvement", it's clear that this is a bit of a washout for the European Pirates. Their gains in Sweden in 2009 came in the wake of the the high-profile trial of the founders of the Pirate Bay, but it's impossible to argue that 2013's Snowden revelations and recent renewed interest in net neutrality wouldn't push traditional Pirate issues towards the forefront of voters' minds in this election.

Instead, something else has happened. Across Europe, mainstream political parties have stolen Pirate policies wholesale. Net neutrality has been permanently enshrined in law. ACTA was roundly defeated. Copyright law is being reformed. Judges are starting to argue that banning someone from accessing the web is 'unreasonable'. Telecommunications borders are being torn down. Plus, following the Snowden disclosures, European politicians are queueing up to condemn the level of surveillance that their citizens are subject to and the countries that are making it possible.

Once the dust has settled, the only cornerstone Pirate policy remaining will be a decriminalisation of filesharing. That's unlikely to happen for the time being -- the rapid growth of legal streaming services is increasingly rendering filesharing irrelevant, and the entertainment industry's arguments that it could kill their fledgling attempts to manage the digital transition seem to hold water with most politicians.

The ultimate goal of any single-issue party (which is pretty much what the Pirates are -- despite their protestations to the contrary) is having their policies adopted by the political mainstream. There's some way to go, but the Pirates' message of digital rights, openness and copyright reform is spreading fast across the world. It's already hard to argue that it's not one of the most successful European political movements of this generation

Pirate Parties may have had a terrible election but, in Europe at least, Pirate politics is here to stay.