“The government cannot, should not interfere with what people believe in,” Ms. Grondal said. “That would be a dangerous path to take.” But the government has been interfering with what people do of late, and shows few signs of allowing religious freedom to justify copyright infringement.

“More and more file sharers are getting busted, especially within the last year,” said Anna Troberg, the leader of the Swedish Pirate Party, which has about 8,500 members. “The big movie companies, the big record companies, want someone to go to trial,” she said, to act as a deterrent to others. Yet, she said, with an estimated two million Swedes involved in such activity, the odds of someone being successfully prosecuted are small: “It’s easier to get hit by lightning than to go to trial.”

Still, the trend is clear and Europewide, and not even prayer appears able to hold it off. In a disclosure of diplomatic cable traffic published last year by WikiLeaks was a detailed request by the United States Embassy to the Swedish government to stop copyright infringement. A Dutch court in May ordered Internet providers to block the Pirate Bay Web site, which is linked to the Pirate Party, or face large fines, a ruling that will virtually block access to the Sweden-based site for the Dutch. Britain’s High Court issued a similar judgment in April.

Mr. Nipe called it a “kind of an inquisition — like burning people.”

Ms. Troberg, 38, a former publishing industry executive who has led the Pirates since 2008, is not a Kopimist. “I’m agnostic,” she said, adding, however, that the group was “very interesting.”

Some people “think they’re poking fun at religion, but it raises interesting questions about the issues,” she said.

Not all Swedes share the Kopimist dogma that information wants to be free, regardless of copyright, yet many welcome the group’s fervor in searching for new approaches to information sharing.

“It’s important to pay for stuff that you download,” said Jennifer Hallberg, 32, who just finished an M.B.A. and is now looking for work. If the Kopimists find a way for artists and writers to benefit fairly from their work without downloaders having to pay, she said, “then they deserve a Nobel Prize.”