On the Web, a Textbook Proliferation of Piracy

By JEFFREY R. YOUNG

Publishers hunt down illegally scanned books

Book publishers are stepping up efforts to stop college students from downloading illegal copies of textbooks online.

One Web site, Textbook Torrents, promises more than 5,000 textbooks for download in PDF format, complete with the original books' layouts and full-color illustrations. Users must simply set up a free account and download a free software program that uses a popular peer-to-peer system called BitTorrent. Other