For over a year now I have operated a fork of the Kopimist Church (Kopimists of Idaho – a fully recognized church), to process donations we have accepted bitcoin donations and PayPal donations. Today after our final round of phone “arbitration”, both sides agreed that we will not be able to settle our differences and our account will stay banned and we will get our $400 of stored funds in 180 days.

Denying service to a person or group arbitrarily based on faith is against Californian law (the state where PayPal operates), it is in the Unruh Civil Rights Act – California’s expansion on Federal Civil Liberties laws. PayPal has admitted over the phone that their ban against the church was issued because my personal website TUEBL links back on the donate page. Any person who knows the basics of limited liability knows that the Kopimist Church can’t be held liable for the actions of its supporters, especially since it has limited liability incorporation which is required of us to be a church in the state of Idaho.

While many of you may never heard of our church, we tend to host various projects for people and will soon be buying a plane so we can provide rapid response to places in the US and Canada who might have communication problems due to censorship or natural disaster. We have been laying low, slowly building up donations from supporters, and were planning on entering big with our new era K2… we truly believe in Kopimism as a religion and we want the world to know about it.

Right now our only course of action is legal action. We wish it didn’t come to this, because as much as we know PayPal is a horrible company we knew that legal action was going to be expensive and the fight was going to be an uphill battle with their fancy lawyers. We can’t sit back and do nothing though, too frequently PayPal uses it’s banhammer with the carelessness of a bull in a china shop… and it’s our obligation as a church which protects the Internet to remind PayPal that we wont just sit back and let them be bullies.

We need your help though! This battle is going to be expensive… We are looking for donations to help get good lawyers who will help us establish a precedent not only for our church but all Kopimist sects and furthermore remind PayPal they can’t just bully people.

Please donate to 1EVeAuB82MZYtavLb4deQ5MCVhPwnThASB (the wallet which is earmarked for this legal issue and nothing else), even the smallest microdonation helps and shows your support for Kopimism as a true religion.