The copyright degenerations are many. IMHO the following is really absurd.
I am an electronic music teacher in the Conservatorio (high level school of music) here in Verona, Italy. As such, my duty is also suggesting books to students. In Italy we have a main book about history and development of electronic music. The book is called “La Musica Elettronica” and is a collection of papers selected by the composer Henry Pousseur, printed by Feltrinelli in 1976. This book is very important because is the only one on which you can find papers about early electronic music written by main composers and translated in italian.
But now this book is no more for sale. The publisher has withdraw from the market because the revenues are not satisfactory. Easy to guess: it’s a technical book for musicologist and composers only (and italian market is no so big as the USA market). So my students can’t buy it. OK, they could make copies, but they can’t because in Italy to copy a book is a crime.
So look at this absurd situation:

• The book is no more available because of the publisher choice
• It follows that neither the publisher nor the authors gain royalties from the book
• So the only way to obtain the book is copying
• Copying is not piracy because the book is no more available
• But copying is a crime