When you hear the word "pirates," what pops into your head?

Plunderers? Somali terrorists? Johnny Depp? Scoundrels? Peglegs? Illegal downloaders?

How about "model sharers?"

That's what occurred to bestselling author Paulo Coelho while he was following the Pirate Bay trial. "The Pirate Bay" is an international file-sharing site where you can find everything from music and movies to video games and porn. The Swedish courts found four people who ran the site guilty of copyright infringement and sentenced them to a year in jail. They also have to pay 30 million kronor ($3.5 million) in damages to long list of companies including Sony Music, Twentieth Century Fox Films and the other usual suspects.

The Pirate Bay verdict didn't sit right with Coelho, an outspoken advocate of freeing content on the web. In an interview last year with TorrentFreak, he said "a person who does not share is not only selfish, but bitter and alone." (Ouch!) Much more to his liking are the pirates on the web and on the high seas. He blogs poetic about their admirable history of collectivism: the seafarers elected their captains, treated escaped slaves decently, and--most important here--they shared their spoils.

Coelho has lived by the sharing-is-caring credo and released his books for free download on his "Pirate Coehlo" blog. (Not such a tough call when you've spent months on the NYTimes bestseller list, but still...).

We're so used to talking about cyber-piracy in monetary terms: every download is "stealing" from the entertainment companies. But what about us users, who actually buy our booty (unlike the pirates of old)? Isn't it morally right for us to share, and immoral to hoard our goods?

The sharing ethos is so sacred within The Pirate Bay and certain other download sites that they've crafted their infrastructure around it. The more generous users are in sharing their personal files ("seeding"), the faster they're able to download someone else's copy of, say, Pirates of the Carribean. The stingier they are with their own files, the slower their access to others' content.

Preschool taught us that sharing is fundamentally good. Give a little playdough, spread a little love. Copyright enforcers have swept aside this basic lesson. In its place, they've established a culture of hoarding (or "leeching" in downloader parlance), where people fear the repercussions of being magnanimous with their possessions. At a time when corporate greed's everywhere in the headlines, can't we all appreciate a little sharing?

Yes, the pirates got scurvy, but they also got sharing. Here's to helping our mateys.