Hi,

I do not know which is the best place to ask and the topic is a bit 
sensible but maybe one of you know more. Frustrated by the lack of 
libraries to quickly deliver some academic articles from the 1970s that 
have only been published in digitized form on CD-ROM and DVD I thought 
about the use of peer2peer networks for academic and E-Learning 
material. Of course this is often against copyright law but I know that 
scholars just share non-open-access articles with their colleauges. 
However to what degree? For instance is P2P more used in countries that 
have less library budgets and less strict copyright law enforcement?

I would not wonder if you can get most copyrighted academic material in 
P2P networks but it is not easy to get a realistic view - many trackers 
are accessible on invitation only and they come and go quickly. Here are 
some I found on a quick search:

http://Bitme.org seems to be the largest one
http://ScienceHD.info - mostly documentaries
http://docspedia.org/ - (aka Docs.Torrent.Ro), ebooks?
http://learnbits.me/ - e-learning ?
..

More can be found for instance at http://www.torrentking.org/?cat=Elearn 
and 
http://filenetworks.blogspot.com/search/label/Torrent%20Sites%20-%20E-Learning%20Trackers

Do you know of any studies that give insight to the coverage and impact 
of such P2P networks to the access to academic material? Or any articles 
about the relations between institutional libraries and P2P-based 
digital libraries?

Cheers
Jakob

-- 
Jakob Voß <[log in to unmask]>, skype: nichtich
Verbundzentrale des GBV (VZG) / Common Library Network
Platz der Goettinger Sieben 1, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
+49 (0)551 39-10242, http://www.gbv.de