Apparently you can create a religion based on, well, anything these days. Once more, you can also have some countries in the world recognize it as an official religious organization. TorrentFreak.com reports that is exactly what happened in Sweden this week. It gave its official nod to the Missionary Church of Kopimism which believes that the sharing of digital files is a sacred act.
The Church of Kopimism was started in 2010 by a group of people who have admitted to pirating activities via file sharing. They felt that their actions, if it were recognized as a religion, might help in their efforts to avoid being arrested for pirating files. The story claims that after two previous attempts to get Church of Kopimism approved by the government of Sweden as a religion, the third attempt apparent worked.
Of course, even a religious organization is not exempt from being arrested for copyright infringement. However, the creators of this new "religion" seem to believe that their new status will in some way help them when future pirating cases are considered by the courts. In the meantime you can learn more about Kopimism at its official web site.