Sweden has given official religious status to Church of Kopimism, a faith and philosophy based on file-sharing. The faith’s foundational document, ““POwr, broccoli and Kopimi,” is available as a .torrent file indexed on The Pirate Bay (natch). It exhorts followers to undertake 100 tasks to attain #g_d (a hashtagged, all-lower-case version of the observant Jewish tradition of writing God as “G_d”).
001. Obtain the Internet.
002. Start using IRC.
003. Group and birth a site.
004. Experiment with research chemicals.
005. Design a three-step program.
006. Take a powerful stance for something positive and essential.
007. Regulate nothing.
008. Say that you have to move in two weeks, but stay for seven months. Come back a year later and do it all over again.
009. ROTFLOL.
010. Relax, you’re already halfway there.
011. Just kidding.
012. Don’t think outside the box.
Build a box.
013. Support support.
014. Organize and go to parties and fairs.
015. Start 30–40 blogs about the same things.
016. Drain the private sector of coders, graphic artists and literati.
017. Create a prize that is awarded.
018. Express yourself often in the media, vaguely.
019. Spread all rumors.
020. Seek out and try carding, and travel by expensive trains. Don’t order sushi.
021. Start a radio station.
022. Everything you use, you can copy and give an arbitrary name, whether it’s a news portal, search engine or public service.
023. Buy a bus.
024. Install a MegaHAL.
025. Make sure that you are really good friends with people who can use Photoshop, HTML, databases, and the like.
As faith strictures go, these ones are actually pretty good. On the other hand, I’m not much of a believer in Gods, G_d or #g_d, so perhaps this isn’t for me.