I've been following coverage of the trial of the founders of The Pirate Bay, quite possibly the world's largest repository of torrent files on the internet.  The Pirate Bay hosts links to the torrent files, which are kept on other computers, outside of the site, allowing the endeavoring copyright violator to download media illegally.  Apparently, the Swedish government has grown tired of being host to such an illicit operation and has finally taken the four jolly gentlemen who run the site to court.  The latest news of the trial seems to indicate that the prosecution has dropped all of the charges related to actual copyright infringement (a pretty remarkable development). While we at the Pod can not condone violating US copyright law (and we would certainly NEVER do such a thing ourselves), the Pirate Bay trial serves to illustrate a good point about the current disconnect between copyright law and the state of information exchange available to the citizenry.  Namely, that said disconnect is totally unworkable in this day and age and that any onus for change would seem to be firmly the responsibility of the law (I really don't see tens of millions of people getting prosecuted for file-sharing any time soon).

Perhaps, in this age of library irrelevancy, the internet should move to take its place?  As a member of my local library, I am able to borrow, view and listen to their media collection any time that I want to.  Maybe it would be best to view file-sharing in this light.