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.
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.
http://paulgraham.com/robots.txt doesn't disallow robots from reading the essays.
And this is the (Kindle compatible) .mobi conversion: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/728316/Paul%20Graham%27s%20Essays.m...
The conversion was done through this service: http://www.2epub.com/
edit: just checked my email, i actually asked him about putting up the epub, not the script. but same difference I suppose.
In your case, you'd have been modifying and distributing his content, rather than providing users a tool for consuming content they have obtained directly from pg.
Think hosting mirrored ad free sites vs creating AdBlock.
He might still have a problem with this (if only because of server load), and it would have been a good idea to check first, but your experience isn't evidence one way or another.
However, wouldn't it be more efficient if one person would do this, and publish it? Now everybody has to scrape PG's site. Thanks for the code tho!
What is the licence on the articles?
