One of the most discussed but least understood higher education topics is college textbook prices. Between 2002 and 2012, those prices increased by 82 percent (compared with a 28 percent increase in the CPI). Each semester, many students shell out almost the equivalent of a middle-class mortgage payment to pay for the various books required in their courses.

Alternatives have appeared in recent years. Students can rent digital and hardcopy textbooks now. And some professors, perhaps sympathizing with the plight of their students, allow individuals to purchase older textbook versions. Other professors compile their own books, offering them to students at low prices or free of charge.

Now, however, it looks like a more existential threat to the textbook market has cropped up: some students are uploading their textbooks as .pdf files and allowing anyone with an Internet connection to download them for free.

For me, it’s hard to believe that this threat did not disrupt the textbook market years ago. The peer-to-peer technology and the ability to upload and share big files almost instantaneously has been part of mainstream culture for fifteen years (Napster came out in 1999).

The textbook and publishing industries are certainly aware of the problems posed by “free textbooks.” The Book Industry Study Group, which represents various constituencies in the publishing world, conducted a survey of 1,600 college students and concluded that they “continue to become more sophisticated in acquiring their course materials at the lowest cost” and that such “illicit” behavior will “continue to increase in frequency.”

Obviously, from a student’s perspective, the ability to obtain free books is a great way to save a few thousand dollars over the course of his or her collegiate career. A college student’s recent Tweet – printed in the Washington Post article linked above – may accurately sum up the attitude of today’s textbook purchasers: “Finding a textbook PDF is like winning $100 on a scratch card.”

Cha-ching, indeed.