A similar service is available between libraries as “Interlibrary loan” or ILL-service. However, these schemes are slow and expensive.
The Pirate University is ILL organized by library users and fulfilled via the web. Request an article to which you don’t have access and someone with access might just upload it for you.
It is a new site – there have been only 29 article requests and less than a dozen responses – and it probably won’t gain much network effect but it is still interesting.
I think this type of sharing is pretty common now. I was just reading about the #icanhazpdf twitter hashtag and Reddit Scholar in Kathryn Greenhill’s paper from VALA 2012 No library required: the free and easy backwaters of online content sharing.
I can’t help but notice how today’s version parallels the one librarians came up with in 2000 in that they both use names which reference a popular, non-library file sharing service – see http://www.oss4lib.org/readings/docster.php
And I also can’t help but notice that this one actually got going. Huzzah!
This is absolutely awesom! Great work!