[amatic]

There is nothing unethical in braking the law. It is illegal to disregard existing laws, ethics is a different matter. There were many racist, sexist, oppressing laws in the past that we consider unethical today, and may even celebrate people who broke those unethical laws in protest to authorities and 'the society'.

[coliveira]

True, there are situations where breaking the law is the ethical thing to do. However, you are trying to put access to a copyrighted book at the same level as fighting against sexism and racial oppression. Unless you can show that these situations are closely comparable (little clue: they're not), you're just creating an excuse to avoid following laws that don't benefit yourself.

[amatic]

In the case of copyrighted books or research papers, it could be a matter of life and death for the user, if we are talking about access to various types of medical research, for example.

[coliveira]

Research papers in medicine are written for specialists, who already have access to them by means of employment. I don't know how access to that literature can save lives otherwise. Even if that was the case, it is a very far fetched way to prove that you need generalized civil disobedience with regard to copyright law.

[amatic]

In a lot of countries in the world, medical institutions or individuals don't have enough money to pay for access to research and books (lib-gen, the sister project of sci-hub also serves pirated books). And I agree, that might not be a proof we need civil disobedience in general (with regard to copyright law), but I think it does show that copyright law doesn't work well for medical research. I think similar could be proved for other areas covered by copyright law, but that would be a long discussion.