First United Church of Kopimism, US

Hello Kopimists,

Let’s take a moment to welcome our brothers and sisters in Australia to the growing list of Kopimism-practicing nations.  Their website can be found in the link bar, and here.

Copy and seed,
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Hello Kopimists,

It’s unfortunate that one website, The Pirate Bay, acting in the spirit of Kopimism, is being intensely targeted by so many pawns of the copyright industry.  You don’t need me to tell you that Google, UK ISPs, India, Belgium, and The Netherlands have censored The Pirate Bay from citizens in each respective country. These actions have been taken due to the susceptibility of fascist regimes to the abhorrent demands of despicable anti-Kopimist interest groups, resulting in the worldwide persecution of Kopimists. We fully support the seeding of Pirate Bay proxies such as www.justflickit.net and the dozens of other proxies out there that allow users to search for TPB torrents without directly accessing the site. We encourage copying and seeding for the purpose of worship and the celebration of Kopimist ideals. Spread culture widely and broadly, as it cannot exist otherwise.

If it feels good, share it,
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Dear Kopimists,

There seem to be several rather shallow conversations about Kopimism lately.  I would like to take this opportunity to clear up some concerns that people have regarding our missionary religion.

Comment 1) Kopimism is like communism/socialism/liberalism

Firstly, communism, socialism, and liberalism are a socioeconomic and political philosophies of governance.  Kopimism is a religion.  We do not involve ourselves with politics.  Secondly, liberals and communists are often concerned about production of material goods, sharing physical property, and establishing coercive, authoritarian regimes that control peoples’ daily lives.  We are interested in multiplying data and through this multiplication, knowledge and culture.  We are not interested in depriving one group of some subset of intellectual property for the benefit of another.  Copying is not stealing.  Remixing is not stealing.  People who group Kopimism with these political philosophies seem not to understand anything about Kopimism or liberalism.  If you spend a bit of time reading about them, you might see some differences immediately.  I suggest using Wikipedia – it’s a wonderful expression of Kopimist ideals.

Comment 2)  If everyone copied everything and resold it as their own, no one would make anything.

This is a logical extreme and does not exist in the real world.  The exact opposite statement could be made in terms of copyright protection: if all forms of intellectual property protection were applied to the extreme and if new ones were created that infinitely extended protection of intellectual property, then no one could open a book without paying for it.  Education, entertainment, and cultural expressions in all of their forms (art included) would become so expensive that only the incredibly wealthy would be able to afford any significant exposure to them.  The world would slip into intellectual and creative darkness due to lack of access.  Innovation would be hampered due to the ability of one creator to live off of the royalties from a single creative act.  Furthermore, people would lack inspiration to build upon the innovation of others because they would be unable to access new creative works.  See, I can do that too.  It’s equally absurd.  Plagiarism and the unauthorized sale of others’ creative content is a completely different subject.  Kopimism does not condone these acts.  We advocate copying and sharing for religious, not financial, reasons.

Comment 3) If Kopimists believe in Kopimism then they should give away all of their personal information.

no u.  Kopimism does not mandate that its members share all of their personal information or even all of their data.  Sharing is a voluntary, timeless, and wonderful act.   We encourage people to share their data, and we believe that the copying, remixing, and seeding of data are holy acts that should be applauded.  Additionally, Kopimism fully supports the use of encryption during worship and strongly values personal privacy.  Please do not make things up about our religion  so that you have an easier time disagreeing with it.

I hope this clears up a few misconceptions that people have about the religion that are not already covered elsewhere on this site and on the Swedish site.  If you have any personal questions or would like advice about worship, please feel free to contact us.  You may also want to check out our IRC chatroom (we have a few on different servers) on irc.telecomix.org #kopimi, port 6669 (port 6697 for ssl connection).  If you need instructions for using IRC or are having problems connecting, please contact us via e-mail (found in our contact section).

Datalove be with you all,

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Hello Fellow Kopimists,
I would like to take a moment to highlight a bastion of Kopimist values on the internet, MIT OpenCourseWare.  This website, hosted by MIT, is a collection of 2000 MIT courses published under a Creative Commons license.  When I say courses, I don’t just mean lecture videos.  The MIT lecture videos by themselves are viewable on the MIT YouTube channel, as are Stanford Courses, and Berkeley Courses.  The MIT OpenCourseWare pages contain far more than the average “open access” fare, including lecture videos, lecture transcripts, subtitle options, course assignments, and even exams with solutions for each course.  It is positively refreshing to see Kopimist principles at work in the upper echelons of academia.

This is your ongoing opportunity to get hundreds of thousands of dollars-worth of world-class education freely and legally.   The only thing you can’t get with these courese is an enthusiastic answer to your burning questions by an experienced professor.  For the cost of tuition nowadays, I’d say that most of us are willing to go without that particular perk of live lectures.

Information brings light to darkness, and right now MIT is shining a bigass laser beam in all directions.  We can only hope that other institutions follow suit and seed their lectures.

Let the data flow,

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Fellow Kopimists,

We are thrilled to see that Kopimism was discussed recently at the 2012 Massachusetts Pirate Party Conference!  The great presentation, courageously delivered by Lauren Pespisa, can be found here.

If you would like more information on the Massachusetts Pirate Party, feel free to visit their website at www.masspirates.org

To the troll in the video who attempted several times to attack Kopimism: sir, you should not bring a legal argument to a religion fight.  Expecting any religion to provide a logic-based mandate for every single action that one might take is absurd and offensive.  It insults the basic moral fiber of Kopimists and all of humanity to outright demand a total moral code of conduct from anyone purporting to have a new perspective on issues of our time.  Are we nothing but slaves to our omnipotent Gods?  This kind of expectation is typical of someone living in the shadow of Judeo-Christian dogma embedded in an overly-authoritarian governance structure.

Copying and disseminating information is ethically right.  Copymixing is sacred and a sign of respect.  These ideas do not deal in any way with compensation of any kind for the transfer of information, nor do they place mandates on Kopimists.  People decide for themselves where they draw the lines.  People decide what they release and what they choose to keep private.  Please, try listening before you speak.  Who knows… you might end up sharing a bit in the end!

Sharing my data
every day
every way,
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Fellow Kopimists,

As a religion, we do not actively engage in political debate of any kind.  When SOPA and ACTA were up for debate, we politely abstained from railing against the injustices brought about by specific pieces of legislation or particular congresspersons.  Unfortunately, fellow Kopimists, a very different assault on our ability to worship is happening now.  It is much harder to see, and much harder to stop, than any public piece of proposed legislation.  It is the willful filtering and censorship of the internet by the very private entities that provide the service, internet service providers (ISPs), in the United States of America.

Hogwash you say?!!? Not in my country you say!!?!! The original CNET News article can be found here.

There is nothing secretive or conspiratorial about it.  Several major ISPs that provide internet service for millions of users are going to start automatically monitoring your activities.  If they THINK that you are infringing on someone’s copyright, then they’ll notify you.  They’ll keep records of all potentially infringing acts.  If your internet connection continues to be used for potentially-infringing activities, they will send you more notices, and eventually they may decrease your bandwidth or temporarily suspend your internet service.  These are not small, obscure ISPs we’re talking about.  These are Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon.

If a telecom company were to set up monitoring software for telephone lines to identify and record any conversations that they deemed inappropriate, there would be an instantaneous and immediate shift in subscribers.  Law-abiding people would flee the service to use other, less-intrusive services simply for the preservation of their privacy.  Due to the limited infrastructure and relatively small number of companies running broadband services, for many people that is just not possible.  Many users will not have access to an internet connection run by a non-privacy-invading company.

Now, in order to determine if you’re potentially infringing on copyright law, the ISP will need to determine 2 things: what internet locations you are visiting, and what type of data is being exchanged with those websites.  This is effectively the same as being forced to wear an ankle bracelet in exchange for being on a piece of private property (like a store or college campus).  Once this infrastructure is in place, it is almost laughably easy to abuse it.

As Kopimists, we respect the free flow of information.  We want to share our data, and we want others to share theirs.  How, then, could someone stop their ISP from determining what websites are being visited?  It is called Tor, and it can be found here.  Please look into it, and set up a relay if you can.  It is important to note that Tor is used for legitimate governmental and private communication EVERY SINGLE DAY by thousands of users.  The people who run Tor are amazing individuals, working almost tirelessly to help Kopimists and other like-minded individuals use the internet for creative, life-improving purposes, even when their service providers or governments would force them to do otherwise.  Tor has proven particularly useful in opening up internet-based lines of communication in countries where governments actively censor free speech between individuals and the outside world.  There are many informational videos about Tor on their website as well as YouTube and perhaps hundreds of interesting articles on a variety of websites.  There information is there for you to learn.  Please, learn about Tor and support this wonderful system.

Hello Kopimists,

I am happy to share a link to a wonderful article with you!  It appears that the corporate IT community is doing its part to promote Kopimism principles by refusing to bid on certain government-sponsored censorship projects!  The Ars Technica article can be found here.

Copy and seed,

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The following statement was recently released by the Swedish Church of Kopimism on their website.  I encourage everyone to read it and seriously consider its meaning.

Today news reached us that we didn’t get the appeal the TPB case to the supreme court.

We’re not surprised by this. The previous court cases has been filled of corruption. From having the minister of justice pressured by the US to illegally make a case of TPB, through the police officer responsible for the investigation (Jim Keyzer) “just happened” to get a job at Warner Brothers the weeks before I myself got promoted from a witness to a suspect, to the judges in the court cases being either board members, or in one case the actual chairman of the board, for the swedish pro-copyright society, it was clear to us that the supreme court – where many of the judges make a lot of money on their own copyrights – would be hard to persuade to take the case. Even though most of the public would want the case tested there. Even though it’s one of the most important cases for all of the EU.

Sweden speaks well about caring about the Internets. They spend a lot of money and time on helping activists all around the world. But who are these people that they’re so proud of helping? TPB has been one of the most important movements in Sweden for freedom of speech, working against corruption and censorship. All of the people involved in TPB at some time have been involved in everything from famous leaks projects to aiding people in the arab spring. We’ve fought corruption all over the world. We’ve promoted equal opportunities to poor nations around the globe. We’ve crushed the monopoly on information. Our close ones, many who have helped building TPB, have been mentioned as possible winners of the nobel peace prize. I’m not bragging – I’m saying this to make sure that people understand who’s doing the right thing here. I haven’t seen the entertainment industry help anyone but themselves.

Sweden is not used to corruption. Or rather; Sweden is not used to actually seeing the corruption that is there. The society is built upon the view that everyone has high morals and ethics in the swedish legal systems. The globalization of the world has changed that.
The entertainment lobby has bullied Sweden around. And not only Sweden. We see this in legislations such as SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, IPRED, IPRED2, TPP, TRIPS, just to name a few. All of these legislations have the same goal – make sure that the control of the internets goes to the rich people that already have some sort of control outside of the internets.

I’m just one of many millions standing up against this. Even though the outcome (which we still haven’t reached) is not favorable for my personal situation, the end goal that we fight for is so much more important than some peoples personal struggles. I’ll live with not being rich – which is easy when you’re not rich anyhow – the rest of my life. I’ll live with whatever sentence I’ll get in the end – I’ll just finish my book. The fight goes on with or without me, I’m just a pawn. But at least I’m a pawn on the morally right side. I’m proud as hell of what I’ve done and I would not change my involvement in any way. I actually think I could have done much more for the fight. And I will.

Today I urge everyone to make sure that the entertainment industry does not profit from them anymore. Stop seeing their movies. Stop listening to their music. Make sure that you find alternative ways to culture. I’ve founded Flattr.com, which allows you to support people that create directly instead of going through the corrupt entertainment industry. Use it in solidarity to the creators, and to your fellow citizen. Or start a competitor. Spread and participate in culture. Remix, reuse, use, abuse. Make sure noone controls your mind. Create new systems and technology that circumvent the corruption. Start a religion. Start your own nation, or buy one. Buy a bus. Crush it to pieces.

Always act with intent and maintain hardline kopimi.

Hello copiers and sharers,

A new article has been posted about the global expansion of Kopimism here.  I would like to take this time to bring up a sensitive subject for Kopimists.

Kopimists may encounter harsh criticism as they seed the faith, particularly when using analogue channels.  We should never relinquish our claim that the sharing of information is basically right and good!  Use your networks, all of them, from local area networks to social networks, to help people understand that we are a peaceful faith dedicated to the expansion of human knowledge and the spiritual growth of humanity.

The image shown in this post was generated and sent to me by a faithful Kopimist and creative talent, TBBack.  Anyone wishing to display their art on the site is welcome to submit it.  You can find our e-mail address on the contact page.  In your e-mail, please make sure to indicate that the images you wish to submit are open-use Kopimi images if you want them to be shared.

Copy and seed,

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Hello Everyone,

We’d like to welcome the Church of Kopimism in Lithuania to the growing list of the global Kopimism multiplication!

Copy is a right,
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