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.