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PDFed Hacker News Daily

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Re: PDFed Hacker News Daily

#11

Post by duck »

pavs wrote: post #8
duck wrote: post #6

I wonder about the copyright issue with this? It is basically packaging someone else's work and producing it in another format. I thought that is why Hacker Monthly had to contact each individual author to get permissions, or is that just because he is selling it?

HackerMonthly is repackaging several articles under a unified name. He is also putting ads on the magazine and later selling them after the first couple of issues. Not getting permission would have been both legally questionale and a dick thing to do. This "web-app" (if I may use the word), is a simple automated way of putting multiple stories in to PDF format. You could do it yourself at home. There is no ad, reform…

Is the distinction obvious if I took your blog articles and packaged them in a series of PDFs and published them on my site for download?

Re: PDFed Hacker News Daily

#13

Post by gurraman »

pdx wrote: post #9
bjonathan wrote: post #3

Very nice, you should use http://viewtext.org/ API to clean the pages and comments. The PDF will be easier to read and with less pages :) I love the idea!

I want to implement something like viewtext.org on my own server (not using an API). I recall somebody mentioning a package that did a pretty good job of cleaning up a web page but can't find it. Can anybody recommend anything?

You might want to have a look at the source of readability:

http://code.google.com/p/arc90labs-readability/source/browse...

Re: PDFed Hacker News Daily

#14

Post by SimonPStevens »

duck wrote: post #11
pavs wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HackerMonthly is repackaging several articles under a unified name. He is also putting ads on the magazine and later selling them after the first couple of issues. Not getting permission would have been both legally questionale and a dick thing to do. This "web-app" (if I may use the word), is a simple automated way of putting multiple stories in to PDF format. You could do it yourself at home. There is no ad, reform…

Is the distinction obvious if I took your blog articles and packaged them in a series of PDFs and published them on my site for download?

The distinction here is between the software and the distribution.

This is legal in the same way that software that rips MP3s from CDs is legal.

On the other hand, distributing the content isn't. So you can rip the content and use it personally, but you can't distribute it without permission.

Re: PDFed Hacker News Daily

#15

Post by pavs »

duck wrote: post #11
pavs wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HackerMonthly is repackaging several articles under a unified name. He is also putting ads on the magazine and later selling them after the first couple of issues. Not getting permission would have been both legally questionale and a dick thing to do. This "web-app" (if I may use the word), is a simple automated way of putting multiple stories in to PDF format. You could do it yourself at home. There is no ad, reform…

Is the distinction obvious if I took your blog articles and packaged them in a series of PDFs and published them on my site for download?

Thats not what this "web-app" is doing.

Re: PDFed Hacker News Daily

#16

Post by pavs »

SimonPStevens wrote: post #14
duck wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the distinction obvious if I took your blog articles and packaged them in a series of PDFs and published them on my site for download?

The distinction here is between the software and the distribution. This is legal in the same way that software that rips MP3s from CDs is legal. On the other hand, distributing the content isn't. So you can rip the content and use it personally, but you can't distribute it without permission.

Its a conversion tool, not a distribution tool.

Re: PDFed Hacker News Daily

#17

Post by duck »

pavs wrote: post #15
duck wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the distinction obvious if I took your blog articles and packaged them in a series of PDFs and published them on my site for download?

Thats not what this "web-app" is doing.

Okay, bad example. Change it so that my site provides a tool to convert your blog posts to PDF. That is basically what this web-app is doing right? Is it different if I put it on a non-app looking site (like my site)?

I understand the difference in distribution vs conversion, but it seems like this is almost a mix. I actually think this service is pretty cool, even though I hate PDFs in general... but I still had to ask. :)

Re: PDFed Hacker News Daily

#18

Post by 9ec4c12949a4f3 »

Honest criticism here with suggestion on how to please me.

I wasn't interested viewing a website I saw last week as a pdf. What I suggest doing is checking out how arc90 made the readability bookmarklett, scoop content that way so that it works on your pages with your own magazine-like design that isn't boring. Include top comments, and create a section for discussions (comments that get a lot of replies/nesting). I go far out of my way to un-style every website to be nice and uniform without superfluous content screaming at me from every direction (why did gopher:// have to die?!).

Re: PDFed Hacker News Daily

#19

Post by SimonPStevens »

pavs wrote: post #16
SimonPStevens wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The distinction here is between the software and the distribution. This is legal in the same way that software that rips MP3s from CDs is legal. On the other hand, distributing the content isn't. So you can rip the content and use it personally, but you can't distribute it without permission.

Its a conversion tool, not a distribution tool.

That's my point. This web app is doing the content extraction and nothing else. (I can see how perhaps I wasn't clear on that)

I'm saying that it would only be illegal if he attempted to distribute the content too, which he doesn't.

Re: PDFed Hacker News Daily

#20

Post by pavs »

SimonPStevens wrote: post #19
pavs wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its a conversion tool, not a distribution tool.

That's my point. This web app is doing the content extraction and nothing else. (I can see how perhaps I wasn't clear on that) I'm saying that it would only be illegal if he attempted to distribute the content too, which he doesn't.

OK, I misread you.
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