TORONTO – The Swedish government has allowed a file sharing group, Kopimi, to register as a religion.
“Welcome to the missionary church of kopimism,” reads the English page of the group’s website, which says there are more than 4,000 registered members around the world.
The name Kopimi comes from “copy me” and has a modest minimum goal of “all knowledge to everyone.”
The website states that kopimists “believe copying and the sharing of information is the best and most beautiful that is. To have your information copied is a token of appreciation, that someone thinks you have done something good.”
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Kopimists have taken refuge in their religion in order to avoid being persecuted by “oppressors.” The categorization of oppressors may come as a shock to anti-piracy advocates, including many members of the music and film industry.
In an interview posted on the New Zealand chapter’s website, spiritual leader Isak Gerson says it took three tries and more than a year to get recognized.
“Information is the building block of everything around me and everything I believe in. Copying is a way of multiplying the value of information,” Gerson told the Kopimist News blog.
The Kopimi logo is a K written inside a pyramid, encouraged to be copied and altered to each user’s liking. Symbols of the religion include “Ctrl C” and “Ctrl V” which are keyboard shortcuts for copy and paste.
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