Why am I in a grey zone for manipulating a bunch of bytes that I have downloaded... | Hacker News

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		georgeorwell on Nov 18, 2012 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: Show HN: Build a Kindle book of PG's essays Why am I in a grey zone for manipulating a bunch of bytes that I have downloaded into a format I find convenient? The bytes were distributed legally by the copyright holder. I downloaded the bytes legally using an ISP that I paid for. The author did not use a robots.txt indicating his wishes that I not download the bytes using an automatic tool. The bytes are unprotected by DRM. I have no intention to distribute the bytes to anyone else. I have not broken the DRM on my ebook reader.

tangue on Nov 18, 2012 [–]

You can scrap for yourself (or in Instapaper, but that's another story), but sharing a script and telling the others to do so is bad.

Call me old fashioned, but I'm thinking that an author has his word to say on the way to structure and distribute his works.

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