There is a false equivalence. They both &quot;share&quot; a piece of content. The difference is that a) the library is bereft of an item while checked out and b) the library, or some benefactor, paid for the item. This means that the content creator got paid for their content<p>When a person shares a file, they are not bereft anything besides some bandwidth for the transfer. They can consume the media as another copies or streams from them. The same is not true for a library or by extension private media. Only one person can consume.<p>If they wanted a true equivalence, you can do it. Putting aside the fact that the DMCA says that private parties cannot backup DRMed material, I can do what ever I want with my material (right of first sale). I can read a book. I can throw it at the dog. I can burn it. I can lend it to a friend. The same is true if I converted the physical medium into a lockable digital resource.<p>In this scenario, I have file copied into a server. The server is my only means of accessing the content. The server is instructed to create a global lock on the media when consumed. So within my house, only one party can consume the material at a time. If I made this server public, I would be effectively allowing anyone to &quot;borrow&quot; my content. Once the content was watched, the consumer would lose access to the content and the global lock would be freed.<p>If I wanted to listen to Abba&#x27;s Dancing Queen while some other person did, I would be blocked. &quot;Sorry, that content is locked&quot;.<p>Now I, as a content owner, am bereft of my material. The only way to get access to it is to forcibly take the global lock from the person, thus ending their streaming.<p>So we can take this simple server concept and apply a Popcorn Time veneer across it. People make their LEGALLY purchased content available. The nodes in this distributed system file lock. It&#x27;s searchable. It&#x27;s free. It&#x27;s perfectly legal (except for the DRM bit, but that&#x27;s another issue).