Computer: Mac OS X, version 10.8 Database: Postgres
Trying to import csv file into postgres.
pg> copy items_ordered from \'/users/darchcruise/desk
I had the same error message but was using psycopg2 to communicate with PostgreSQL. I fixed the permission issues by using the functions copy_from and copy_expert that will open the file on the client side as the user running the python script and feed the data to the database over STDIN.
Refer to this link for further information.