Church of the New Age Pirates!

A new sect is growing in the small town of Uppsala, 70 km or so from the Swedish capital of Stockholm. Known as «Missionary Kopimistsamfundet» its gospel is the free copying of anything and everything that can possibly be copied and distributed over the Internet (files, texts, music videos, IT programmes, everything).

And the slogan taken by its members is: “Don’t steal, copy!”

The sect has links with the Swedish Pirate Party (also active in Portugal), sharing the philosophy of Kopimi (copy me) – in direct opposition to the legal situation of copyright.

The idea is that information should circulate free of moral and legal constraints, and be available to all.

But why a sect? To turn computer usage into some kind of cult? For founder Isak Gerson, a philosophy student aged 19, it makes total sense bearing in mind that the Swedish Constitution allows that “every citizen is guaranteed freedom of religion, whether he practices alone or with others”.

The idea is that if the sect is accepted as a religion, the act of copying could not be considered illegal, as it would be the work of a cult! As in any religion, there are rules (even if a little fundamentalist). Members are not allowed to buy books, CDs or DVDs, or use commercial operating systems, like Windows. They can only use open source applications, like Linux.

Intriguingly, last May Gerson and his fellow “high priests” sent a petition to the Swedish Government calling for it to recognise their newly invented church. “The bid was rejected because Swedish law demands a more formalised form of religious communion, like praying, or meditation”.

Fine. So Gerson tried again. This time he described the formal rituals of his sect. The combination of keys Ctrl+C and o Ctrl+V were defined as sacred symbols. It was a good try, but the request was denied a second time.

Nonetheless, the sect remains busy. Latest news is that they’ve made available 18.592 scientific publications of the Royal Society’s «Philosophical Transactions» (33 gigabytes of files in all), using the peer-to-peer system.

An underworld of fanatics? Radical pirates? Immature young men looking for trouble? Where will it all end?

In truth, there’s no easy answer - because if we think about it, what are we really doing with our computers, anyway…?