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by CountHackulus 4312 days ago
Disappointed it's explicitly not for download, but it's still excellent to be able to have access to all of these.
3 comments

If you're reading it "on line" you've already downloaded it.
Yeah, but you can't put it easily on your tablet and read it offline while sitting in the park ;-) Still liking it a lot.
That's what I was wondering about. You'd be saving the lectures, not downloading them, if you did that. The license needs some clarity.
"Saving" vs. "Downloading" is not a duality we should entertain either. If it is downloaded, it is likely saved to a permanent storage, and maaaybe some process will eventually delete it. In any case this should not be the territory for law.
Why don't they want it anyway?
Hopefully some talented soul will write a script to convert these HTML files into mobie, epub and PDF.
From the landing page:

"However, we want to be clear that this edition is only free to read online, and this posting does not transfer any right to download all or any portion of The Feynman Lectures on Physics for any purpose."

They don't know what the word "download" means. This statement is nonsense.
"Download", as used in practice on the internet when referring to documents generally means copying the whole thing to your computer such that it can be used there without further internet access.

It generally does not include temporary transfer of small parts of the document for immediate reading, except when the focus of the discussion is about the underlying mechanics of the transfer.

This supposed duality is nonsense. A change of cache settings in your browser amounts to the same result. There's no such thing as a "temporary transfer", and I think we should not entertain the notion.
I don't see how it's any different from time-shifting with VHS. In this case, you're just using a longer-term "temporary" format (epub, mobi, pdf) which allows you to peruse the website later.
a) 304 not modified. Too late.

b) That's not how the internet works. One has already wgot the entire thing.

I don't know if you can actually take that right away however. I'm not aware of any precedent for this situation.
Lets hope that talented soul doesn't end up like Aaron Swartz.
https://github.com/fmap/flp.mobi

This repository previously included a toolchain to build a collection of eBooks, in ePub and MOBI formats, from Caltech's online edition of the Feynman Lectures. Those scripts have since been removed, in response to the suggestion that their continued availability might lead to a permanent discontinuation of HTML access.

If anybody was wondering and looking at the forks, these scripts don't work anymore. They have converted the links to simple Javascript functions to link to chapters which stop these scripts from running now.
pdf. Not sure how kosher the copyright is

All 3 volumes: http://selfdefinition.org/science/25-greatest-science-books-...

That's a terrible quality pdf. For $14.99 you can purchase the enhanced version here: http://www.basicfeynman.com/enhanced.html It was very cool of the publishers to allow this, and they deserve our support.

Otherwise, if you must download the basic version, go to the piratebay and search for "Feynman Lectures on Physics (epub,mobi,html) - FIXED"

Please note that this is only a small subset of his lectures. They are the "Six Easy Pieces".

  SIX EASY PIECES, taken from these famous Lectures on 
  Physics, includes the most approachable material from the 
  series
The pdf is a fairly accurate copy of the print books which I own but which are heavy things to lug about.
a Kindle format would be amazing as I can take it anywhere with my Kindle and learn on the go.
pandoc will do pretty much exactly that.

http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/README.html