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The ethical principle is that of respect of private property. Some legal person owns the copyright of the book and unless you obtain their written permission beforehand, copying the book is an injury to their property, whether it is directly measurable in dollars or not, whether the copy is shared or not.
The principle by which creative products are assigned the status of property of the creator, in the first instance is a separate one.
One might be opposed to the second principle but support the first, in which case the ethical obligation to not to copy a book would be unchanged.
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