Presented at International Communication Association annual Conference, May 22, 2014: In April, 2012, in a ceremony officiated by an “ops” wearing a Guy Fawkes mask and wielding a talking laptop, the first Kopimist wedding was performed. It marked a significant milestone for this rapidly growing religion, founded in 2010 by a Swedish philosophy student named Isak Gerson and officially recognized by Sweden less than two years later. The religion is based on the principals that copying, disseminating and reconfiguring information are not only ethically right, but are in themselves “sacred” acts of devotion. Kopimist philosophy also holds that “the internet is holy” and that “code is law” (a phrase copied from legal scholar Lawrence Lessig). Kopimism has already raised some interesting questions and debates in both legal and religious circles. Some have grumbled that the Kopimists are simply a bunch of “pirates” cleverly using religious protection to shield them from liability for copyright infringement. Others have suggested that the religion is little more than a sophomoric rhetorical exercise, the predictable product of a precocious young philosopher. In this article, I consider these viewpoints and suggest that, if we take Kopimist doctrine at its word, we can better understand it as the crystallization of an emerging value system centered around the proliferation of digital, networked information. Like copyright, and monastic Christianity before, it, Kopimism stakes out a socioepistemological vantage point, seeking to reconcile the regulatory demands of the 20th Century’s copyright regime with the cultural ramifications of today’s global digital information infrastructure. Based on interviews with Kopimist officials and worshippers, as well as a critical reading of the religion’s “constitution” and other doctrinal texts, I delineate the complex ethical boundaries surrounding this new belief system, and examine it in contrast to previous religious and legal systems, evaluating its points of continuity and rupture to illuminate the unique challenges to ethics and morality in an era of information abundance and continuing material and educational inequity.

1. SHARING IN SPIRIT
KOPIMISM ANDTHE DIGITAL EUCHARIST
Aram Sinnreich
Rutgers University
School of Communication & Information
!
ICA Preconference on Sharing
May 22, 2014

2. WHAT IS KOPIMISM?

3. KOPIMISM’S FAMILYTREE
2001
2003
2003
Pirate Party
2006
Kopimism
~2010

4. SOPHISTRY?
NnEeTt

5. SsEeCcRrEeTt
Our words shall, simultaneously, sound as
foolishness upon deaf ears and lovely
caresses to those who see and hear, but
above all: They should bite firmly into you –
and your mom.
!
100 roads to #g-d:
!
004. Experiment with research chemicals.
!
027. Give yourself cult status, and act
accordingly.
!
100. Be careful of burning kittens.

6. SCAM?
“This story . . . has
hoax written all over it.
Let’s be clear here. This
is a religion designed
to circumvent piracy
laws.
M.I.A.

7. MORAL PRECEPTS
1. Information is sacred
“In ways and for reasons that
remain to be explored, the
ribosomes appeared, who
could copy.This was the
beginning of Life.We therefore
see Copying as the first
manifestation of the Divine
Spirit.”
- Kopimist Gospel
“kopimi is the natural state of
the universe.”
- roth, #telecomix
2. Information is our birthright
“All people should have access
to all information produced.”
- Kopimist Website
“To keep source code [for
software] hidden from others is
comparable to slavery . . . [IP
laws] are egregious violations
of our intellectual
sovereignty and freedom”
- Kopimist Constitution

8. MORAL PRECEPTS
3. Copymixing > Copying
“Copymixing is a sacred kind of
copying, moreso than the
perfect, digital copying, because
it expands and enhances the
existing wealth of
information.”
- Kopimist Constitution
“Sexual reproduction is not
about making identical copies,
but about remixing, which we
see as the highest form of
copying”
- Kopimist Gospel
4. Privacy is a fundamental right
“It is a direct sin to monitor
and eavesdrop on people.”
- Kopimist Website
:“It is important that no
monitoring or recording of
worship activities takes place.
Because of society’s vicious
legislative and litigous [sic]
persecution of Kopimists,
participants in the service are
expected to encrypt their
traffic.”
- Kopimist Constitution

9. ETHICAL PARAMETERS
““I think personal information are
NOT part of koppimism . . . to be
right, if are some data private,
they shouldn’t be copied, I also
respect privacy of data [sic]”
- Nick Wao, #telecomix
“I sort of came to my on
conclusion on what they mean by
‘all information’, I believe they are
speaking on public information
about the world, and not the private
information of a person..I could be
wrong.”
- e0s, #kopimi
“public information sharing in
general is a benefit to society, and
the information sharing of private
individuals against their will, is
detrimental to society.”
- e0s, #kopimi
“Kopimism does not dictate where
these lines should be drawn. We
hope to empower people to
become their own masters and
to decide what is right and wrong
for themselves.”
- Chris Carmean
“most of the kopimist sites have a
very clear bias towards data that
general use useful to many”
- roth, #telecomix

10. DOCTRINAL LINEAGE:
NORSE MYTHOLOGY
Well-being I won
And wisdom too.
I grew and took joy in my growth:
From a word to a word
I was led to a word,
From a deed to another deed.
!
- Poetic Edda

11. DOCTRINAL LINEAGE:
MONASTIC CHRISTIANITY
“You who will transcribe this
book, I charge you, in the
name of our Lord Jesus Christ
… compare what you have
copied against the original
and correct it carefully.
!
- St. Irenaeus

12. DOCTRINAL LINEAGE:
LOGOS THEOLOGY
“In the beginning was the
Word, and the Word was
with God and the Word was
God”
!
- John 1:1

13. GERSON’S EUCHARIST
Holy Communion is the “first step
in building a radical Christian identity
against individualism”
!
“The breaking of bread is not only a
symbol of unity but the sharing of
food is also a literal way of loving thy
neighbor. That we all share the same
bread means that we are all part of
the same world, the same
system.”

14. CONCLUSION
“You who will transcribe this book, I
charge you, in the name of our Lord
Jesus Christ … compare what you
have copied against the original
and correct it carefully.
“the Author of any Book … shall
have the sole Right and Liberty
of Printing such Book and
Books for the Term of One and
twenty Years”
“‘Copy and Paste what
thou wilt’ shall be the
whole of the law.”

15. THANK YOU.
Aram Sinnreich
Rutgers University
School of Communication & Information
!
ICA Pre-conference on Sharing
May 22, 2014
!
Twitter: @aram
sinn@rutgers.edu