CHURCH OF KOPIMISM: FAITH JUST A MOUSE CLICK AWAY
August 26, 2015 - Andrew Masterson The Sunday Morning Herald
Many religions have adopted the internet as a means of outreach, but the hippies and the pirates belong to the few new faiths that see the net as the wellspring of their beliefs. The net is not the gospel; the net is the deity, writes Andrew Masterson.
The question, framed baldly, seems specious, an act of bolshie undergraduate bird-flipping smart-arsery. Is file-sharing a religious act?
But the real word – like the conventions of faith often claim to be – is weirder than you can imagine. File-sharing, it turns out, at least according to the government of Sweden, is an act of holy communion, and pressing Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V are gestures as blessed as making the sign of the cross.
There is an irony to a religion dedicated to magical thinking coalescing around the brute binary logic of software coding.
In 2011 Swedish authorities registered an organisation called the Missionary Church of Kopimism as an official religious body. According to its constitution, the rocks upon which the church is founded are three: the search for knowledge is sacred; the circulation of knowledge is sacred; the act of copying is sacred.
Since its recognition, the Church of Kopimism has spread around the world. There is even a branch in Australia, albeit a moribund one. The Oz mob's last blog post was in 2013, announcing that its office-bearers were off to Stockholm to celebrate the 10th anniversary of The Pirate Bay. (Perhaps rapture or apostasy struck; we may never know.)
Officially, at least, the Church of Kopimism denies any connection to Pirate Bay, the notorious file-sharing exchange whose Swedish founders were convicted and jailed over copyright breach in 2009. The separation is legally solid but the argument behind it is every bit as convincing as claims that Australia's Institute of Public Affairs has no links to the Liberal Party.
Indeed, in July last year the jailed Pirate Bay boss Peter Sunde demanded, as he had every right to do, a visit from a Kopimist priest in order to practise his faith. The demand was refused and legal kerfuffle ensued.
Sunde was released in June this year, presumably giving thanks to the gods of dodgy downloads for his deliverance.
The ubiquity of the internet is a factor long ago embraced by various religious groups, mainly because visiting a sinner's IP address instead of his physical one is a much more efficient way of fishing for converts. Also, there is less chance of being bitten by a spaniel.
The California-based Universal Life Church was one of the earliest organisations to conclude that e-preaching was a great way to boost the congregation. The church offers free, instant online ordination, and today boasts more than 20 million clerics worldwide, including, oddly enough, Sir Richard Branson and Sir Ian McKellen.
A different, and perhaps more pious, expression of internet-based faith can be found in the British-based organisation called i-church. The organisation was founded in 2004 by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oxford as an experiment to see if a virtual Benedictine community could be more successful than a physical one. The answer turned out to be a resounding yes, and today the i-church has several doctrinally diverse imitators.
Every major religion has produced online expressions. There are virtual Muslim, Jewish and Buddhist communities, as well as cyber-exchanges for numerically smaller faiths, such as Zoroastrians and the Baha'i.
New-age, nature-based religions have also sprung up online. One of the most popular is the purely net-based faith known as Cybershamanism. The tribe, as its congregation is known, relishes in a believers-only stance – newbies must apply to join. Most of its webpages are hidden behind log-ins.
Cybershamanism is focused on a $499 software program called Cybershaman VIII Pro. The program appears to be a means of generating trippy animations and meditation-inducing music, and comes with an optional piece of kit called a Wish Machine.
There is an irony to a religion dedicated to magical thinking coalescing around the brute binary logic of software coding.
At first blush, Cybershamans and Kopimists seem to have little in common. On a deeper level, however, they are soulmates.
Many religions have adopted the internet as a means of outreach, but the hippies and the pirates belong to the few new faiths that see the net as the wellspring of their beliefs. The net is not the gospel; the net is the deity.
Will there be more? Time will tell, Ctrl-C willing.