[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.