> Any other scraping, especially when ignoring robots.txt, is unsolicited. And if said website takes additional advanced anti-scraping measures, and you persist in bypassing that too, then to me you're clearly unethical, even if it's technically legal.
I suppose it just comes to down to your own morals, but I see nothing at all unethical about scraping a site for personal use provided that it's done gently enough to avoid DoS or disruption. The idea that saving webpages to read later is parasitic or unethical if a website uses robot.txt to discourage commercial scrapers and data-mining goes way too far.
You're really taking the most innocent stance possible on scraping.
The article talks of large scale scraping, which includes all kinds of bypassing tools, proxies, hardware, or commercial services that abstract this away.
This industrial scale level of scraping is not the same thing as you saving a local copy of 3 web pages. The scale is a million times bigger and for sure it will not be for personal use.
I suppose it just comes to down to your own morals, but I see nothing at all unethical about scraping a site for personal use provided that it's done gently enough to avoid DoS or disruption. The idea that saving webpages to read later is parasitic or unethical if a website uses robot.txt to discourage commercial scrapers and data-mining goes way too far.