Kopimi is not primarily about file sharing. It is about copying in the basic sense — the kind that happens on dance floors, everywhere in nature, in all communication.
There are connections to the sociologist Gabriel Tarde and his ideas about imitative rays and imitation being one of the "fundamental interactions" of any kind of society, even nonhuman societies.
It's about rejoicing in multiplicity, abundance, overflow. Here an important influence is George Bataille, especially within the sub-sect of kopimists who emphasize the power of copying in itself over any particular piece of static information. The way a loudspeaker copies music into the minds of hundreds of dancers imitating each other — and the way all of this vanishes as it happens: quite useless, but fun.
There's a tendency for reporting to focus on Sweden as some kind of pirate paradise with The Pirate Bay being the major actor, but that's a really shallow and boring focus.
I think Kopimism as a state-recognized belief community is primarily a fun hack, but also a starting point of a new and interesting fractal development. Who knows what will happen? Media and internauts will copy this meme endlessly and inspire lots of lulz and weird stuff.
To think of it as satire is to think that the categories of the world are already pre-formed and that acts and statements are just commentaries or judgments. Worse still to think it's a way to "get out of jail free" — this completely misunderstands the situation, nobody believes this.
Kopimi tells us to explore the virtual possibilities of the world. What does it mean to invent a religion of copying? Let's try it and see!
Kopimism has been recognized as a belief community and not as a religion[1][2] and as such does not give the followers of Kopimism the same umbrella of protection that is provided to mainstream religions in Sweden. More details on this discussion can be found on reddit[3]
As for the effectiveness of this movement, I'm skeptical. If the intention is promotion of freedom of information and critique on intellectual property, there are much more effective ways to go about it; and if the intent is humor/satire, there's not much of that either. I'd avoid discussing Scientology here despite the parallels because discussions about "religion" tend to be more verbose and speculative than what is acceptable at HN.
I don't have a citation for this, so please take it with a grain of salt, but according to my Swedish friend, this movement does not legalize file sharing and those purporting to be members of the movement won't be covered for the sake of being members. In other words, it doesn't really do anything to protect its members from file sharing laws.
I can't tell if they're satyrizing religion or copyright, or subverting religion to undermine copyright, or what, but I am interested to see where it goes.
It also makes you think about these things in different ways. I mean, don't the debates on copyright seem as idealogical as religious debate? Can you imagine their idea, however tongue-in-cheek, could spark effective change -- on either copyright or religion? Which church would you rather go to, a mainstream one or theirs?
I've seen far crazier religions and far less effective ways to comment on copyright.
I think they simply cut out the unnecessary details. What's a religion, from a political and sociological point of view? It's an ethics from which you think laws, reputation, behavior, social organization ought to proceed; this view is normally shared by a statistically significant, and generally structured, group of people.
Whether people chose a given ethics because an invisible friend in the sky told them so matters for themselves, but not for anyone else. AFAIK, Buddhists don't have any proper imaginary friend in the sky, yet they're acknowledged as a religion.
I think there's a bunch or people, who might want structure themselves, who share a sense of ethics, of Good and Evil, a view on what's an ideal society... every politically relevant feature of an organised religion. I'm OK with them calling themselves Kopimistsm they need some label anyway. In a country where you have to publicly state your religious affiliation, such as Sweden, it ought to be a valid choice.
Pastafarianism is a satyre, because it says "So we need an imaginary friend, if we want our ethics to be recognized as legitimate? And we have do silly stuff to please Him? Here's an imaginary friend, and here are a couple of silly stuff He likes". Kopimism is respectful, by not mocking this implicit imaginary friend requirement. Up to their opponents to make an ass of themselves by explicitly demanding the imaginary friend, in which case I'd expect the response to be Pastafarian indeed.
In many ways copyright debates are idealogical, yes, but that's not bad. What (many) religions have is dogmatism, which is much more dangerous.
But considering that less than 4% of Swedes go to church regularly and only 17% say religion has an important part in their daily lives, I doubt there's a great change on religion to be had.
>I've seen far crazier religions and far less effective ways to comment on copyright.
I doubt this method is any more effective than most other methods. Primarily because religion and Intellectual property are very combustible issues on their own and the mix of two will just drown out any rational discussion on either of topics.
The discussion will deviate from religion to IP and back at the whim of the parties involved and no consensus will ever come out on either of the issues. The topic is a very fertile ground for all kinds of logical fallacies. Take your pick from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies
Even if people keep level-headed and discuss the issue(s) at hand, the discussion will have no focus. This very thread can be a good yardstick. As this thread ages, count the no. of discussions regarding religion and no. of discussions regarding IP.
This statement struck me as odd:
"In some ways these guys are looking outdated. File-sharing as a means to pirate content is becoming yesterday's technology,"
Which other means to pirate content are in development? Could he be referring to Streaming rather than Sharing (e.g. Grooveshark vs Soulseek) as an upcoming form of piracy?
Yup. It feels like "everyone" I know here in Norway has switched from pirating music to using Spotify, even my parents. In November 2010 1 million Norwegians used Spotify (and it has probably increased a lot since then) and Norway is a country of only 5 million people! Since Spotify is a Swedish service it's probably just as, if not more, popular there.
Pirating movies and software are still quite common though.
Yeah, I don't think that guy actually meant what he was saying, either because he had some alternative agenda or because he doesn't know what he's talking about. I want to know what the other forms of online piracy are. Technically with streaming, you're still copying a file and sharing it - just in little chunks...
He's a music analyst, so he probably means streaming. I'm not sure if he means from Youtube et al. or from dedicated music-piracy websites. It does seem like streaming is easier and has less risk of legal repercussions than file sharing.
Indeed, that left me wondering. If it's so outdated, perhaps they could stop hunting "the last of the file-sharers"? Or perhaps it's just some way of trying to make file-sharing look less "cool", something of the past, for the public.
As a matter of fact, I have. Sure, they were all the illegal-downloading type of pirate, and maybe you were talking about the kind that robs boats and gets scurvy, but they are the same thing because they are referred to by the same word.
They should have a way for you to officially "register" as a member of the Kopimism. That way if they sue you for copyright infringement you can actually have proof that they are "persecuting you for your religion", and you're not just declaring on the spot that you're a big believer in Kopimism to escape the lawsuit.
You're missing a huge chunk of information here. They are not a Religion. Their official paperwork says they are a Belief Community or something like that. As such their beliefs and membership to this "religion" does not protect them from being prosecuted for infringement.
In fact, the whole idea seems like a joke. If they actually are trying to get immunity for copyright infringement they aren't doing a good job. If this is some kind of social commentary or satire it still isn't very interesting.
Do you actually imagine that founding a new religion and being recognized as such would be easy...? It's one thing to say that this isn't their goal or that they aren't done yet. It's quite another to trash them for not achieving outlandish milestones.
You also missed the point. What I said had nothing to do with it being easy. I was just clarifying that because of their official status they don't have any exemptions. Im not trashing them for not achieving anything. If I were to trash them I'd trash them for trying to achieve some political goal by founding some bullshit religion. Rights are important all but founding a religion in protest is frivolous. The political party is one thing but a religion? Really?
I would like to point out that in most of your examples, country is US and/or religion is Christianity. Since, in US muslims cant even erect a mosque without raising a public debate, I doubt Kopimism in US would get away with copyright infringement if its recognized as a religion there. (Unless/until it ages to about 2000 years or gains a majority of devouts or devise/discover a god that infringed copyrights for the good of humanity).
Point is, not all religions are treated equally in most of the countries and there's a long long way to go until this religion gains enough popular fervor to get away with piracy.
None of those are really germane. Few even have to do with getting special rights just by virtue of being a religion, and those that do are hardly carte blanche to violate other people's rights. In general, religions are afforded a little bit of leeway within the law, but if a religious practice is illegal, it's illegal. (IANAL, but I have studied this topic for some time as a matter of personal interest.)
Happens everywhere, even in more secular countries. Mostly because of old rules. Here in Switzerland (and in germany) the pirateparty activly tries to fight against that.
In my opinion, they effectively created a logical dilemma.
Either you are against them being granted special privileges because they are a religion (and thus have to be against that in general to not appear as a complete hypocrite) or you defend that right, effectively allowing every Kopimist to freely share files without anyone being able to do anything against it.
This is a false dichotomy, and not even a particularly subtle one. Do you really believe what you're saying? There is no reason you must either give religions no privileges whatsoever or give them anything they want.
Do you think this is the first religion to have an objectionable practice? We already don't let religions do human sacrifice or many kinds of animal sacrifice, we don't allow them to encourage rape — heck, most countries don't even allow polygamy. Nobody takes much flack for any of this.
If claimed adherents don't post their personal information (credit card info, date of birth, etc) then I doubt their sincerity. Kopimism and privacy are clearly antithetical. The first information a sincere Kopimist should seek to share is their own information.
If a person claims to be a Kopimist and only copies pop culture ephemera, then I think they're bullshitting.
What does "hacker ethics" have to do with a supposed "religion" based on free transfer of information?
There may be similarities, but a "religion" that claims to believe that information should be free would seem to have no room for private information. Keeping your private information private ought to be a cardinal sin in kopimism. If it's private, then you're not sharing it, but you claim that information should be shared.
Thus, kopimism a bunch of insincere, sophomoric rubbish.
As an example, Sikhs in Sweden have a religious exemption from the laws against carrying knives.
Concerning this particular example, I really don't think that the Kopimism founders are out to get around any laws. Thy are much more interested in the philosophical question of what is morally right, where they land on the opposite end of the spectrum from hard-core copyright defenders.
On the other hand, I think Sikhs make a small concession in that they wear smaller-than usual kirpans, only a few inches long, which often qualifies as a pocket knife and is legal.
A christian/amazonian group fought the government to import and consume a schedule 1 narcotic in their ceremonies. If sharing information is central to kopism's practices then it seems it would be discriminatory to prevent them from doing so.
Sharing information is the only way to advance human progress. I'm not religious at all, but I certainly consider sharing to be a fundamental aspect of humanity and an important right we should all defend and help to advance. Richard Stallman, with his opposition to the "war on sharing" would probably agree. Are we Kopimists? To what extent is this actually a religion?
I changed my Facebook religion to this. I'm not sure whether that says that I take Kopimism seriously (because I'm on board) or I don't (because I don't know much about it but think I know enough).
There are connections to the sociologist Gabriel Tarde and his ideas about imitative rays and imitation being one of the "fundamental interactions" of any kind of society, even nonhuman societies.
It's about rejoicing in multiplicity, abundance, overflow. Here an important influence is George Bataille, especially within the sub-sect of kopimists who emphasize the power of copying in itself over any particular piece of static information. The way a loudspeaker copies music into the minds of hundreds of dancers imitating each other — and the way all of this vanishes as it happens: quite useless, but fun.
There's a tendency for reporting to focus on Sweden as some kind of pirate paradise with The Pirate Bay being the major actor, but that's a really shallow and boring focus.
I think Kopimism as a state-recognized belief community is primarily a fun hack, but also a starting point of a new and interesting fractal development. Who knows what will happen? Media and internauts will copy this meme endlessly and inspire lots of lulz and weird stuff.
To think of it as satire is to think that the categories of the world are already pre-formed and that acts and statements are just commentaries or judgments. Worse still to think it's a way to "get out of jail free" — this completely misunderstands the situation, nobody believes this.
Kopimi tells us to explore the virtual possibilities of the world. What does it mean to invent a religion of copying? Let's try it and see!