Slashdot Mirror


Swedish File-Sharers File For Religious Status

nloop writes "A group of file-sharers in Sweden have requested that their religion, Kopimism, be officially recognized in Sweden. Although this status has been denied once in the past the struggle for religious freedom from persecution continues. Aside from deeming CTRL+C CTRL+V as sacred symbols other beliefs include the flow of information being ethically right and closed source software being 'akin to slavery.'"

14 of 420 comments (clear)

  1. This has gone too far by ohnocitizen · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Look I get that companies providing content (or more accurately, managing content distribution) are acting like thugs. I even agree that individual copyright violations for personal use aren't that big a deal. But are we going to go so far as to support something this ridiculous? To read summaries like this you get the sense there isn't any value to intellectual property at all. If content producers know that anything they produce is "up for grabs", what incentive do they have to keep producing? Why is the idea of purchasing intellectual property of any sort, from software to movies, "akin to slavery"? Its economic privilege to assume they can just do it "as a hobby" or "contribute to open source". Open source has a place, but so does closed source. Fighting back against individual prosecutions is worthwhile and laudable. Framing those who wish to produce intellectual property and then charge for it as "slavers" is dishonest and counterproductive.

    1. Re:This has gone too far by gman003 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It isn't supposed to succeed. It's supposed to make a point that the system as it is is completely and utterly broken, and motivate change.

    2. Re:This has gone too far by MoonBuggy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Even if you think their opinions are ridiculous (and I agree that they go a bit far, but to be honest crazy extremes on our side of the argument help to counter the crazy extremes on the other), it makes an equally good statement on the absurdity of giving religions (which, pretty much by definition, consist of the collective beliefs of a bunch of people) protected status. I'd challenge anyone to come up with a generic legal definition that encompasses major and minor world religions, without showing favouritism, but still excludes these guys.

    3. Re:This has gone too far by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You probably already are, I'm writing software for a living...

      So yes, I do feel the pain of copyright infringement. But given the way copyright and IP laws are today, even I, someone benefiting from them, think they go too far.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  2. Why be such morons? by Antidamage · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is not the way to get the ethos behind file-sharing taken seriously. It's counter-productive and childish.

    1. Re:Why be such morons? by MoonBuggy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      As I mentioned in a post above, if you think their opinions on sharing are ridiculous, then it makes an excellent statement on the problems with allowing religion to be a protected class. Religion is something that a group of people happen to believe - you can't give special treatment to certain types of belief without discriminating against those who do not subscribe to those particular types.

    2. Re:Why be such morons? by MoonBuggy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Just to clarify, in case anyone gets the wrong end of the stick: I'm of the firm opinion that everyone should be able to say and believe absolutely what the hell they like, and those rights should be protected indiscriminately for all, but the problems start occurring when you offer religious organisations tax breaks, exemptions from laws applied to other organisations, and so forth.

    3. Re:Why be such morons? by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This is not the way to get the ethos behind file-sharing taken seriously. It's counter-productive and childish.

      It is, however, if they're successful, a way to enjoy the same legal protections granted to a number of other ethoses (ethoi?) which are demonstrably more counter-productive and childish than any amount of file-sharing could ever be. Which I kind of suspect is the point. "We don't care if you agree with us, just stop persecuting us" is a demand which has proven quite effective, in the civilized world, for all sorts of beliefs which previously been considered bizarre at best and criminal at worst.

      --
      The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
  3. Re:Them swedes. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You refer to this question:

    Wait, how is desiring to collect more entertainment than could ever be consumed in a human lifetime without compensating the creators not a form of personal greed?

    I guarantee it has been answered in the past ten years. You have just not been paying attention. But I will answer it again.

    Having free access to more oxygen than can be consumed in a human lifetime is not considered personal greed. Why not? Because the good is abundant. Same for data. Once it exists, it is even more abundant than oxygen. It can be duplicated endlessly without costing anyone anything. Therefore, performing such replication is not greedy.

    If my copy of it prevented you from having a copy of it, then grabbing up more than I need would be greed. Since that isn't the case, the word greed does not apply.

    There you go, answered. You might disagree (and you would be wrong) but you can no longer claim that it hasn't been answered.

  4. Re:Story of Beginning in this religion by gman003 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's not saying much. Pastafarianism, the worship of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, makes more sense than Scientology.

  5. Re:Them swedes. by Hal_Porter · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Having free access to more oxygen than can be consumed in a human lifetime is not considered personal greed. Why not? Because the good is abundant. Same for data. Once it exists, it is even more abundant than oxygen. It can be duplicated endlessly without costing anyone anything. Therefore, performing such replication is not greedy.

    Movies aren't like oxygen. If people don't pay to watch them the businesses that make movies will do something else instead. Talking about the costs of making a copy (zero) and neglecting the cost of making the original movie (hundreds of millions of dollars) completely misses the point that the reason people are willing to invest money in making movies is because they expect to get that money back and more from selling the right to see it. If everyone pirated it rather than paying to see it there would be no reason to invest money in making future movies. Thus movies would not get made.

    So the people that pirate are reducing the chance of future movies from being made by reducing the profits on the ones that exist. They are a bit like customers that go to a restaurant and eat their fill but don't pay - in the long run they will force the restaurant out of business. That could easily be described as greedy by other non free loading patrons. Not to mention by the owner.

    --
    echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  6. Re:Heretics! by VortexCortex · · Score: 5, Insightful

    All who follow the mighty Jobs know that the only proper religious symbols are cmd-c, cmd-v

    All who are true practitioners remember the arcane incantations ctrl+ins and ctrl+shift+ins...

    Beware younglings, for ctrl+c or cmd+c may invoke the dark ones, who will promptly unleash their wrath and cancel your program depending on the gracious terminal that surrounds and gives meaning to your actions... At all times we must be mindful of the terminal, for it is the source of all, it permeates and binds our actions into reality.

    When in full presence of the holy terminal you must tread lightly and always remember to show your respect by donning the venerable shift key's cloak of distinction when you utter either form of the standard incantations, lest you interrupt the dark one's slumber.

    Only a false prophet claims there is but one true way. Only a fool believes such lies -- There are many paths to a single place depending on your origin.

    Also note that the good enjoy a hearty embrace -- Be wary of those that when greeted with a friendly grasp of hand, later claim you have held them wrongly.

  7. Re:Story of Beginning in this religion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    100% of people who build things, copy things.

  8. Re:Them swedes. by sarahbau · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There really is no scenario in which piracy does not deprive somebody of something.

    Oh please, not this one again.

    If you want n dollars for a movie, I have n * 0.1 dollars and I instead copy the movie, have I deprived you of n dollars? Had I offered you 0.1 * n dollars you would've spit in my face...

    What if I copy your movie as an alternative to not watching it at all?

    These are both perfectly reasonable and likely situations.

    Not THIS argument again. People downloading movies aren't too poor to pay to watch them. They're just too cheap to pay to watch them. If something costs n dollars, and you have n*0.1 dollars, either wait until it costs less or you've saved more. It's easy to say "I wouldn't have bought it anyway," when you plan from the start to download it rather than buying it.