The Swedish governmental agency Kammarkollegiet has bestowed religious status on the Church of Kopimism, for whom sharing information through copying is regarded as a religious ritual.
For the Church of Kopimism information holds a value, in itself and in what it contains, and the value gets multiplied through copying.
They hold keyboard shortcuts for copying and pasting, CTRL+C and CTRL+V, as sacred symbols of their religion. According to the Church’s website, Kopimism has been striving for legal recognition in Sweden for over a year.
They were officially recognised as a religion just before Christmas 2011.
According to Kammarkollegiet, the registration would have very few direct consequences.
According to Church of Kopism’s spiritual leader Isak Gerson, hopefully, this one step towards the day when they can live out their faith without fear of persecution.
However, industry analysts do not fear that this development would have much effect on the global crackdown on piracy.
