Hello Bibliolaf. I'm also a student of Information Science, but am focusing more on the way in which information is stored, categorized, and accessed rather than on books. One of my biggest frustrations in my studies is the extent to which my professors keep falling back on library science and books for examples. Since I come to Information Science from the technology side (with my prior studies in Software Engineering), I would love to approach the Information Science discipline in and of itself instead of always being dragged into its heritage (at least at my university) of springing from library science.
So -- welcome to MobileRead. I'm a proud owner of an Amazon Kindle and just love having a device on which to read the books which I consume so rapidly. (I have read 57 books this year and am about 1/2 way through 3 others. Another way to look at my recreational reading is the 20,137 pages I've read this year.)
I'm curious about the darknet and other sources of illegally supplied books -- but I'm not curious enough to go out and find the exact location of any of those sites for fear of having to explain to legal authorities what I was doing there.
A study such as yours would allow me to satisfy my curiosity, and *should* provide some protection against prosecution. I'm fortunate enough to have sufficient funds to purchase the books I want -- so the "getting for free" isn't as tempting as the "knowing I could if I wanted to" is. So, please share your findings -- not the network locations -- but who is creating the ebooks, what their motivations are, and all that.