I would like to point out that in most of your examples, country is US and/or religion is Christianity. Since, in US muslims cant even erect a mosque without raising a public debate, I doubt Kopimism in US would get away with copyright infringement if its recognized as a religion there. (Unless/until it ages to about 2000 years or gains a majority of devouts or devise/discover a god that infringed copyrights for the good of humanity).
Point is, not all religions are treated equally in most of the countries and there's a long long way to go until this religion gains enough popular fervor to get away with piracy.
None of those are really germane. Few even have to do with getting special rights just by virtue of being a religion, and those that do are hardly carte blanche to violate other people's rights. In general, religions are afforded a little bit of leeway within the law, but if a religious practice is illegal, it's illegal. (IANAL, but I have studied this topic for some time as a matter of personal interest.)
Happens everywhere, even in more secular countries. Mostly because of old rules. Here in Switzerland (and in germany) the pirateparty activly tries to fight against that.
In my opinion, they effectively created a logical dilemma.
Either you are against them being granted special privileges because they are a religion (and thus have to be against that in general to not appear as a complete hypocrite) or you defend that right, effectively allowing every Kopimist to freely share files without anyone being able to do anything against it.
This is a false dichotomy, and not even a particularly subtle one. Do you really believe what you're saying? There is no reason you must either give religions no privileges whatsoever or give them anything they want.
Do you think this is the first religion to have an objectionable practice? We already don't let religions do human sacrifice or many kinds of animal sacrifice, we don't allow them to encourage rape — heck, most countries don't even allow polygamy. Nobody takes much flack for any of this.
If claimed adherents don't post their personal information (credit card info, date of birth, etc) then I doubt their sincerity. Kopimism and privacy are clearly antithetical. The first information a sincere Kopimist should seek to share is their own information.
If a person claims to be a Kopimist and only copies pop culture ephemera, then I think they're bullshitting.
What does "hacker ethics" have to do with a supposed "religion" based on free transfer of information?
There may be similarities, but a "religion" that claims to believe that information should be free would seem to have no room for private information. Keeping your private information private ought to be a cardinal sin in kopimism. If it's private, then you're not sharing it, but you claim that information should be shared.
Thus, kopimism a bunch of insincere, sophomoric rubbish.
As an example, Sikhs in Sweden have a religious exemption from the laws against carrying knives.
Concerning this particular example, I really don't think that the Kopimism founders are out to get around any laws. Thy are much more interested in the philosophical question of what is morally right, where they land on the opposite end of the spectrum from hard-core copyright defenders.
On the other hand, I think Sikhs make a small concession in that they wear smaller-than usual kirpans, only a few inches long, which often qualifies as a pocket knife and is legal.
A christian/amazonian group fought the government to import and consume a schedule 1 narcotic in their ceremonies. If sharing information is central to kopism's practices then it seems it would be discriminatory to prevent them from doing so.
Imagine if I claimed I could go around doing (insert religious privilege here) because my religion said I could. I wouldn't get away with it.