Nor was Jacob thrown by an odd, penurious tradition called "Mrs. Claus's Dead Pear Tree of Gently Read Books," in which the adults trade coffee-ringed copies of Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" for books from the public library that actually need to go back by Jan. 2.

YouTube gained a lot of notoriety as the place where users traded copies of "Lazy Sunday," a sketch that appeared on "Saturday Night Live" and became a cult hit.

U.S. Conducts Searches In Move to Stop File Sharing Federal authorities conducted six searches in a move to disrupt a network used to trade copies of movies, software, games and music.

Napster, the Internet service that earned the affection of the masses and the wrath of the record industry by enabling users to trade unauthorized copies of music for free, announced plans to go legit.

And the impending transition to digital television raises copyright concerns about viewers' ability to trade high-quality digital copies of movies and television shows over the Internet.

The legal defense of most file-sharing networks is that even if some users trade bootleg copies of "Pirates of the Caribbean" rather than just their own creations or works in the public domain, it is the users who are liable for any copyright infringement, not the network.

It is aimed primarily at the makers of file sharing software, which is used to trade copies of digital files over the Internet.

Robert Schwartz, a lawyer for some of the studios and record companies, compared Altnet's role to that of people who hand out fliers at swap meets organized to trade bootlegged copies of movies and music.

Federal authorities searched computers in six locations yesterday in an attempt to disrupt a network used to trade copies of movies, software, games and music.