I am sorry for making a snap judgement against you, now knowing the facts I feel you were totally justified in your actions. I'm a big believer that information should be free and that piracy is a circumstantial solution, this was totally one of those circumstances and my previous comment was rash and rude, again, sorry. How come the professor didn't simply email it out, did you ask them? Did the university take any action against the student association?
No problem. He delegates it every year to the students association, he don't want to have to do it himself (the printing thing) and once he delegates it, he said to me it was too late for giving us the pdf files as it might trouble the students association. As I had inside info it was definitely not a problem for them to give us the pdf, I asked them, but they didn't accept because they had already printed a huge number of books and it might hurt the sales. Next year, they will change their process and provide a pdf for those who want one. The University wasn't directly involved. My association and theirs organize some events together so I had to do that gently without damaging the relations between our associations.