I'm not a lawyer but I have been involved in business management (biotech) with a great degree of reliance on intellectual property and copyright law. I agree with your analysis that monetary loss is the key for both IP and copyright. Without monetary loss there are no damages and no provable claim.

For people who spent money with URC purchasing URC's hardware, but can't get the free software for supporting such a purpose from URC because of policy, I think your book analogy fits. And I think any ethicist would conclude your book analogy is ethical.

However, the fact of no provable financial loss does not guarantee that a company will not harass or attempt to sue someone.

But policy is not law nor does policy imply a legal sanction. A good example of legally unenforceable policy without legal sanction is the license agreement Sony has with display manufacturers for broadcasting full 1080i (1080P) on HDMI connectors. Sony’s policy is that if you want such a license you must not enable the copy protection handshake that allows full resolution transmission unless it’s on an approved display device. Trouble is the “hand shake” is in the public domain. Thus if you want to handshake with a Sony approved (under the license) HDMI reproduction device (Blue Ray DVD) you must sign the license agreement and abide by Sony’s policy. If you don’t sign the license agreement you are free to do whatever you want, except you cannot sell Sony approved display devices. Thus companies legally make devices that handshake and convert the HDMI signals to component for older HDTV’s without HDMI. The component signals are at full 1080i (1080p) on the Y, Pb, Pr cables.

Anyway, I'm curious if anyone knows if URC has articulated a policy on this and if this forum has a policy, regarding posting such materials, that URC refuses to supply.