A pirate's life for me

"If sharing is stealing then Librarians are Pirates," read the sandwich board in front of the Bayard Taylor Memorial Library. Baffled, I asked the Sandwich Board Coordinator for an explanation. She explained that it was in response to some curmudegeonly TV personality who had expressed the view that public libraries were no more than common thieves, cheating authors out of their royalties by allowing people to check books out instead of buying them.