Is it ethical to use another university's journal subscription if yours doesn't have access? As a graduate student, sometimes I really could use access to journals or databases of tables that for some reason my university doesn't subscribe to.  I have friends at other Universities that do subscribe to these journals and it would be very helpful to have the data.  Is it acceptable to ask them to retrieve the data?  I don't really want to start this if it's going to run me afoul of the rules.
Is it against the law? Probably.

It it scientific misconduct? A breach of ethics? Hardly.

It is acceptable? It's your decision to make based on risk analysis. If you don't do it on a large scale (i.e. someone supplying many people with papers), it's probably okay. It is common practice.



Also, be aware that many journal articles can now be found either in pre-print or post-print form online (though this depends widely on your field), either on institutional repositories or on the authors' webpages. If you're merely missing access every once in a while, you can also nicely ask the corresponding author.