kopimistsamfundet.org

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,

AdVATAR