# Is site ripping ethical?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-site-ripping-ethical/146644>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [January 4, 2003, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-site-ripping-ethical/146644 "2003-01-04T19:45:51Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![black\_rabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f19dbf/32.png) [@black\_rabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/black_rabbit)\
**Post date:** [January 4, 2003, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-site-ripping-ethical/146644/1 "2003-01-04T19:45:51Z")

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Say there was a guy by the name of **white544**. Who was scouring the web looking for a place to download a zip file of the W3C’s CSS specifications for offline viewing.

He stumbled across the site of a guy who offered the specifications for free on the web, and also sold a zip of them for those who don’t want to have to log in to view them.

**White544** could go through the whole site, page by page, and save each page individually, but that would be a pain in the neck. Obviously, he’s loathe to part with the dough to get it all at once.

Now suppose **white544** discovers that the site in question is available (via HTTP - no breaking and entering required) via his FTP client. This would allow him to download everything he needs at once.

Is it theft?

Is it ethical?

What if it was a porn site, and he was grabbing jpegs instead of html files?

What about those offline browsers for PDAs that will do essentially the same thing?

Your thoughts?

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**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\
**Post date:** [January 4, 2003, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-site-ripping-ethical/146644/2 "2003-01-04T20:23:22Z")

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Why should you have to do that? The specs should be freely available elsewhere.

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**Author:** ![Alereon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecd19e/32.png) [@Alereon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alereon)\
**Post date:** [January 5, 2003, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-site-ripping-ethical/146644/3 "2003-01-05T05:40:12Z")

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Of course its ethical. If they didn’t want to make it available for you, it wouldn’t be online without a password.

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**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\
**Post date:** [January 5, 2003, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-site-ripping-ethical/146644/4 "2003-01-05T14:16:56Z")

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If it’s downloaded for personal use, I’d have no problem with it. When I saw the thread title, I assumed the subject was about ripping a site and publishing it on the web as your own work; that would be plagiarism and clearly wrong.