Pirates get religion in Sweden

Kopimis’ (pronounced “copy me’s”) spiritual practice can get a little repetitive but, hey, that’s the whole idea. Sweden’s copyleftists have united to form an official religion called Kopimism. Founded and led by philosophy student Isak Gerson way back in 2010, the religion is also a community of file-sharers “which claims it considers CTRL+C and CTRL+V (keyboard shortcuts for copy and paste) to be sacred symbols,” according to a Los Angeles Times blog. Copy and paste are the religion’s two commandments. Membership is very informal, but it did take Kopimis three tries to obtain formal status. “The blog Torrent Freak reports that membership in the church has grown from 1,000 to 3,000 in the last six months,” and the founders expect rapid growth with official recognition and all the media coverage, according to the L.A. Times. “Hopefully this is one step towards the day when we can live out our faith without fear of persecution,” the Times quotes Gerson as saying. “Kopi that,” it adds. A BBC source calls the whole idea so yesterday, since file-sharing is old technology for pirating content. But a Time.com column suggests this might be a workaround for SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act awaiting the votes of Congress) – those who perform “pixelated perfidy” could move to Sweden. For his part, Forbes writer E.D. Kain finds Dudeism much more appealing as a religion. I do too, because look at their opening appeal: “Come join the slowest-growing religion in the world – Dudeism. An ancient philosophy that preaches non-preachiness, practices as little as possible, and above all, uh … lost my train of thought there. Anyway, if you’d like to find peace on earth and goodwill, man, we’ll help you get started. Right after a little nap.” [Whoa, I copied and pasted that – am I a Kopimi?]