Kopimism

The Missionary Church of Kopimism (in Swedish Missionerande Kopimistsamfundet), is a congregation of file sharers who believe that copying information is a sacred virtue and was founded by a 19 year old philosophy student Isak Gerson and Gustav Nipe in Uppsala, Sweden in the autumn of 2010. The Church, based in Sweden, has been officially recognized by the Legal, Financial and Administrative Services Agency as a religious community in January 2012, after three application attempts.

Gerson has denied any connection between the Church and filesharing site The Pirate Bay.

The name Kopimism derives from the words copy and me which are the fundamental roots of the Church's beliefs and calls for an invitation to copy information. The work "Kopimi" first showed up on a pirate Agency Forum. Isak Gerson, one of the core founders saw something beautiful and theological in this concept of "copy me" and argued that the digital sharing of data is a fundamental act in our universe through the reproduction and copying of cells, DNA, and genes and that the entirety of the internet is essentially for sharing.

Gerson has been credited with once saying, "The only thing we can do as Christians now, I suppose, is to do what Jesus tried doing – and do it better."

The followers of the religion are called Kopimists from copy me. A "Kopimist" or "Kopimist intellectual" is a person who has the philosophical belief that all information should be freely distributed and unrestricted. This philosophy opposes the monopolization of knowledge in all its forms, such as copyright, and encourages file sharing of all types of media including music, movies, TV shows, and software. In fact, the act of withholding and economizing information through copyright is against the sacredness of information. In its spiritual emphasis on copying as an ideal, Kopimism shares values with Chinese aesthetic traditions, in which "copying is valued not only as a learning tool (as it is in the West) but as artistically satisfying in its own right," a concept also called duplitecture.

According to the church, "In our belief, communication is sacred." No belief in gods or supernatural phenomena apart from Kopimi itself is mentioned on their web site. CTRL+C and CTRL+V, the common computer shortcut keys for "Copy" and "Paste," are considered sacred symbols. Some groups believe that Kopimi is considered to be a god, and others believing it to be a sacred symbol and spirit residing within every living being.

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Wikipedia