Last but not least: File sharing as a religion
The use of Internet file-sharing services is now officially a matter of faith in Sweden: the "Missionary Copimist Community" has been recognized by the relevant authority as a registered religious community.
According to Spiegel.de, the idea of the Kopimists originated with a 19-year-old Swedish philosophy student, himself a self-confessed online pirate and file sharer. He has been trying since 2010 to convince the Swedish authorities, among other things, that he and his fellow believers consider the key combinations Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V to be religious insignia, that they use a pyramid with a capital C as a religious symbol, and that any place can be a religious place if a small Kopimist pyramid is erected there to symbolize: "This is where we copy and distribute." And that he and his followers actually believe in the six Kopimist commandments:
1. the duplication of information is ethically correct.
2. the dissemination of information is ethically correct.
3. the remix is more sacred than the perfect digital copy because the remix is a cross-copy of a lot of information.
4. copying or remixing another person's information is a show of respect, a strong expression of acceptance and of copimistic belief.
5. the internet is sacred.
6. code is law.
Finally, the student has achieved his goal and convinced the authorities of his faith. But of course, recognition as a religious community does not mean that every copyist can copy wildly past copyright law - religious obligations or not: the law remains the law.
