The Government Accounting Office reported recently on peer-to-peer impact on universities, along with a synopsis of enforcement action by the government, as well as what campuses were doing about the problem. The median cost of peer-to-peer file sharing on universities was estimated at roughly $100,000K per year. The photo, left, is of an agent displaying disk drives confiscated in "Operation Buccaneer", carried out by agents in the U.S. (27 cities) and 5 other participating countries.
Universities continue to examine the issues around peer-to-peer networks, and papers are available from the recent workshop (June 4-5, 2004) on the Economics of Peer to Peer Systems at Harvard University. The first workshop was held at UC Berkeley in 2003.
