Exactly. The worst that happens is they say no or don't respond.

When I need it, I know how to pirate, but I am privileged enough in terms of my institution that I can get most of anything I want (I mostly pirate for family needing niche things in engineering, and I am in the humanities). BUT, I had this one occasion that both validated my feelings about the system and fucking infuriated me. A professor from an institution that did not have the right subscriptions emailed me asking for an article I published, because they wanted to assign it for a seminar, but could not legitimately access it. That made me lose my shit. I didn't get paid, neither did the editors or peer reviewers, but you know, god forbid someone read it for free. Which is when I realized I didn't even have final copy myself, so I had to go to JS**, download it, spend some time cleaning the "downloaded from XYZ.XYZ.XYZ.XYZ address at XYZ institution" footers on the PDF, sent It to them and encourage them to further pirate that shit

today i learnt