So, what would you as a student do if the CD didn't exist ?

Would you photocopy one of the books ?

If you personally can't afford the book/CD, you should persuade whatever institution you study at to purchase it for their library and then borrow it from the library for the time that you need it like any other book.

Just because it is easy to make the CD available on a web site doesn't make it any less of an offence than copying the pages of a book.

Would you consider it OK for me scan in "Learning Perl" (or any other book) and make that available on a web site ? - it is just the same IMHO.
--
Brovnik