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Idle: File-Sharing Is Not a Religion, Says Swedish Government
Dangerous_Minds writes "ZeroPaid is reporting on an attempt in Sweden to recognize filesharing as a religion. The religion's website calls this 'Kopimism' and says that sharing of knowledge is sacred. Apparently, Swedish authorities were not convinced. A recent report shows that the attempt failed to convince the authorities to recognize Kopimism as a religion."
this is clearly an agenda and bias. everyone should have the right to be insane (er, I mean, have a religion). age of the fantasy should not be relevant at all.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
As you know very well, copyright law has nothing to do with peoples' personal information.
They are doing it wrong: you need to lock up the information, so you can get religious status (Scientology).
I wonder what court ever decided it was OK for LR Hubbard's crap to get religious status?
Bram Stolk http://stolk.org/tlctc/
Funny, that can be said about most religions too. Followers do something stupid (Crusades, terrorism, crazy priests, etc.) and the rest of the world decides that anything connected to them must be stamped out immediately for the greater good.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
"This religion doesn't rely on needless superstition and blind faith."
"Doesn't fit the criteria, then."
I don't know, ask the Catholic Church that question. It's clearly an international child molestation racket which largely functions to protect its leadership from prosecution, yet to date no legal authority has moved to shut it down.
This happens all the time laws will have exceptions (like slaugher cannot cause unnecessary suffering, except...) and also other rules. Sometimes a classroom can be half-filled with students with something on their head, but little Johnny is warned to take off his baseball cap. The trick to this is that "freedom of religion" trumps most other laws. Kopimism sounds like very interesting as a religion... once there are enough followers, the government has no choice but to recognize it.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
I am curious as to what their criteria are. If Scientology can be a religion, why cant anything?
Liberty.
Piratism has a decent chance of becoming a religion. It just takes a couple of centuries for a religion to "gel", to be recognized as meeting the key criterion, recognized by the Romans etc.: "It's not going away". In the meantime, they will need to practice what they preach, and take their trials and tribulations.
Gently reply
No. Seriously! We ARE knowledge sharing beings to the core; This fundamental capability IS the very essence of human nature. Without our ability to communicate and thus share knowledge, information and culture we would be no different than any other primate -- even LESS than apes. Face it: We are not truly human unless we share knowledge. Vast amounts of our existence IS our external culture that we are not born with and that we only acquire through the sharing of information.
We owe our very rule of this planet, our place in the food chain, and EVERY social, technological or other advancement of value to humanity's capability to share our thoughts and culture. Now, for the first time in history, in the Information Age, many humans willingly allow large amounts of our RELEVANT culture to be withheld and actually fight to protect the right of the greedy to DESTROY the public domain -- The very thing that makes us human!
Copyrights are now utterly evil -- They are a plague upon man. These restrictions now last for THREE GENERATIONS: 70 years beyond my life. That's my life, the life of my children (ending 30 years after I die), and the life of my GRANDCHILDREN, 70 years after I die. By the time anyone can LEGALLY duplicate ANY new piece of our culture ( song, books, software, games, photos, paintings ), freely they will be DEAD, and their kids will be DEAD, and their children's children WILL BE DEAD! -- No one who enjoyed the short-lived success of my books and games will even be alive to remember them when they become part of our public domain!
There was another age where the flow of knowledge met such great barriers -- The Dark Ages.
This evil legal idea of Copyright is now designed to ROBS US of our public domain, and ensure that the free common knowledge remains IRRELEVANT! The founding father's of the US granted copyrights for the betterment of society as a whole, and thought that the duplication monopoly should last about 12 to 14 years -- This was in a time when copies were expensive and only a select few could make duplications. These words have been duplicated over TWENTY times before you read them due to the routers between us. We all have duplication machines, we do not need to be protected from those that would hold the printing presses in hostage! The duplications are in INFINITE supply! To merely use information now is to duplicate it many times.
The strict laws designed to keep greedy publishers in line have now been turned against the common man because we all now own information sharing tools capable of creating duplications at essentially zero cost. The copy restrictions harm society as a whole! Down with copyright! Copyright is a law; Jim Crow was a law. Rosa Parks sat at the front of a bus, and none were harmed by her doing so; Ignoring unjust laws is an act of civil protest. I shall share ANY knowledge I desire freely and none shall be harmed by my doing so.
Additionally: Economics 101 -- Regardless of value or demand, if supply is infinite the price is ZERO. Silicon has great value! Would you like to buy some expensive sand?
Outlawing the free sharing of culture is to outlaw human nature -- The very definition of creating a police state.
How dare anyone scoff at the most sane, obvious and basic belief to date: Sharing Knowledge is Sacred.
To each who has, I charge you to isolate yourself and neither give nor take any information form any others! No books, no Internet, no music, NONE of OUR culture -- just solitude! Do not speak to another living human or hear what they say. Try to function this way for JUST ONE WEEK as less than an ape. Otherwise, you must admit your hypocrisy! I would like you to remove yourself from our free sea of culture permanently, but I am not so harsh or foolish to even request someone do such a thing!
Sure
If Kopimism's main doctrine is the sharing of knowledge, then it clearly fails the primary characteristic of a religion, which is to share beliefs. In fact, distinguishing knowledge from belief pretty much disqualifies it as a religion. Religions generally deny the value of knowledge, primarily by classifying knowledge as just another set of beliefs that's no better than anyone else's beliefs.
If you prefer actual knowledge of facts, then you might be a scientist, or a historian, or maybe just an enlightened individual, but you're not religious. Religions don't depend on actual knowledge. You just believe what you're told, because if you don't, then that religion's god(s) will punish you severely (with the help of their followers). This doesn't require any file sharing, since the religious leaders are quite good at supplying you with all the beliefs that you'll ever need.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Jesus copied and shared his loaves and fish.
C'mon guys, Sweden adopted Copyright as its new Religion of State. Can't have a totally competing one, right? The King of Sweden is officially "Copyright Defensor" and reports to Biden, the Supreme Pope of Copyright in the US Whitehouse. Sure, like every religion, there are extremists, but the Copyright Taliban haven't killed anybody... yet... right? Right?
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Like cases of law, previous citation and proof can further validate a point:
:D
- If we could have the Church of Emacs, then why not the religion kopimism?
- If Perl monks can peacefully continue secret enlightenment, then kopimisim perhaps should be given a chance.