While Congress renewed a higher education act last week that aims to reduce textbook costs, downloading textbooks illegally is still on the rise.
Although there are multiple ways to download e-books, one of the most popular ways is to use torrent sites, like isoHunt or The Pirate Bay .
The Pirate Bay, the self-proclaimed largest torrent tracker in the world, has faced legal action from giants like Microsoft and Apple , but that hasn't stopped it from allowing users to check out what textbooks are available to land on their desktops.
While the site doesn't keep statistics on textbook downloads, it has seen an increase in e-books being tracked, Peter Sunde , spokesman and co-founder of The Pirate Bay , said.
"I would guess this is because more and more people seek knowledge and it's a cheap and fast way to get to it," he said.
