The cost of college textbooks has risen sharply from 2002 to 2014. As a result, students have to look for other less expensive options  , such as renting books. Now, they find another way, that is, using textbooks on the Internet, uploaded by other students. It is hard to know how popular this practice will be, but many college students around the country are uploading their expensive college textbooks onto the Internet, so that other students can download them for free and avoid the big fees. A year ago, a student wrote a blog called Children of the Stars about a professor who insisted that students buy the newest edition of a specific sociology  book for more than $200 and didn't allow them to purchase an older paperback  edition of the same book for $5. The student wrote, "The newest edition of the book is so expensive. Fortunately, we found the electronic one online, which is very cheap. This is why we downloaded. " The blog is followed by a list of websites where people can download books. Curious about how varied the selection of books was and how easy it was to download them, Vocativ.com decided to do an experiment. The workers of it picked five typical and important courses of freshmen and tried downloading all these textbooks on the websites offered by the student who wrote Children of the Stars. They typed the titles of these textbooks into a computer, and found them immediately. Within minutes, they had four textbooks on their hard drive. It is illegal to upload or download copyrighted materials without permission, but students still do it due to its advantages. Besides, schools haven't taken action to stop it. What did Vocativ.com find out from its experiment?
Downloading textbooks was easy. Downloading textbooks was illegal. Downloading textbooks was expensive. Downloading textbooks was impossible.