To address your point ("So what's really the harm here"), there's a lot of reasons copyright law exists, including:
1. By using his work without permission, you risk misrepresenting his message. For example, you might accidentally remove a key passage or quote or citation. After all, you say "Below are (in our opinion) the essential excerpts" - I have a feeling he wouldn't agree.
2. He almost certainly prefers to have his work consolidated in a single place (he has a distinctive style), for any number of reasons (branding, analytics, ability to remove and/or edit, etc.)
3. At the end of the day, it's his property.
I think it's easy to think "these laws don't really make sense here, because of [foo] reason", but it's nonsensical to do so without asking for pg's permission. You risk looking like you knew that he wouldn't be ok with it. If you really intended to help him, just ask.
1. By using his work without permission, you risk misrepresenting his message. For example, you might accidentally remove a key passage or quote or citation. After all, you say "Below are (in our opinion) the essential excerpts" - I have a feeling he wouldn't agree.
2. He almost certainly prefers to have his work consolidated in a single place (he has a distinctive style), for any number of reasons (branding, analytics, ability to remove and/or edit, etc.)
3. At the end of the day, it's his property.
I think it's easy to think "these laws don't really make sense here, because of [foo] reason", but it's nonsensical to do so without asking for pg's permission. You risk looking like you knew that he wouldn't be ok with it. If you really intended to help him, just ask.