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Tuesday January 17, 2012

 
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The Church of Kopimism: File Sharing Religion

If information is knowledge and knowledge empowers then is the act of sharing that knowledge a spiritual imperative? The four-thousand members of the Church of Kopimism would tell you it is. Sweden which recognizes elves and gnomes as religious communities has also officially recognized file-sharing as a religion, The Church of Kopimism. Today, we hear from those who worship at the altar of technological altruism something that makes others envision .. Copyright Hell.

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Part Two of The Current

The Church of Kopimism: File Sharing Religion - Co-founder, Isak Gerson

We started this segment with a clip from Agni Ortiz, a self-described Kopimist who lives in Kamloops, British Columbia. And what he was describing is a religion built around the idea of copying and sharing information freely and for free.

Chances are that at some point, you or someone you know, have illegally downloaded a song, a movie or a TV show. But for Kopimists, file-sharing is a way of life with its own moral code. And now, in Sweden at least, it is a religion.

Earlier this month, the Swedish Government officially recognized a local file-sharing group as a religious organization. Isak Gerson is the co-founder of the Church of Kopimism. He's also a philosophy student at Uppsala University and he says the church has about 4,000 members, for whom file-sharing is a form of worship. Isak Gerson was in Uppsala, Sweden.

The Church of Kopimism: File Sharing Religion - Pirate Party of Canada

For now at least, The Church of Kopimism only exists in Sweden. But there are people around the world who subscribe to similar beliefs. Freelance journalist Shelley Joyce met up with two self-described Kopimists in Kamloops, British Columbia.

Shawn Vulliez sees this issue in political, rather than religious terms. He's the Vice-President of the Pirate Party of Canada and he was in Vancouver.

The Church of Kopimism: File Sharing Religion - K. Matthew Dames

The idea of file-sharing as a political movement or even a religion has been greeted with a lot of skepticism. But K. Matthew Dames says it's not as crazy as it sounds and that it's part of a much broader pattern of consumers straining against laws that have been in place for hundreds of years.

K. Matthew Dames is a Research Fellow at the Quello Center for Telecommunication Management and Law at Michigan State University. He is also the Copyright and Information Policy Advisor at Syracuse University and he was in Syracuse, New York.

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