[ruthwickham]

I taught in Australia where the copyright rules are strict. You can copy 10% of a book "for study purposes" - I always understood that to mean your own study. The education department in West Aus pays royalties that allow teachers to copy up to 30 copies per page of certain books. So, for instance, if I had three classes to teach, then I had to purchase three copies of a book.
Here in China, of course, they just "send the book to the printers" and each student gets a photocopied version, often with a variety of chapters from different books to suit the set course. In some cases these books are just about impossible to obtain here. I understand that if a book is out of print, then its fair game to photo-copy - so maybe you could argue that these unavailable books come into the same category.
Or not.