DAP can also can stand for
Digital Archive Project. A DAP of this sort is where a group of dedicated people take on the daunting task of transferring all
episodes of a certain show to a digital
format on computers, with an important restriction: episodes which are available for purchase somewhere are excluded. (This restriction is for
legal and
ethical reasons; they are not a bunch of
pirates.)
Standards are the
name of the game; consequently, the digital versions are very high quality.
The first DAP to ever be attempted, the one with which this time consuming ordeal started, is the one for Mystery Science Theater 3000. So far, they've managed to digitize about 93% of all (commercially unreleased) MST3K episodes. Each of these digital episodes are around 700 MB, but never more; they will fit on a 80 minute CD-R this way.
Update: As Zorak indicates, many, many more shows have been subjected to the process of DAPing now. They have archived shows I've never even heard of! (Of course, I could just be an uncultured, illiterate buffoon or something.) More are being added all the time! Well, sort of. The best way to see what's going on is to go check the site.
eDonkey2000 is the most viable method for obtaining releases. For various reasons, one needs to hop on IRC at irc.dapcentral.org and join #dapcentral to find out the IP and port of the eDonkey server.
All in all, if you like quality programming and have a fat pipe, there's no better use for your bandwidth.
More info about the whole lovely mess of DAPs can be found at http://www.dapcentral.org.
Kudos to all the nice folks who spend their valuable time and cycles encoding episodes.