Reading the e-mail from above, it would seem more likely that the request to remove head- and footnotes wasn't followed, or at least not with the care necessary

Reading the e-mail from above, it would seem more likely that the request to remove head- and footnotes wasn't followed, or at least not with the care necessary to remove most infringing content. Alternatively, they could allege some sort of TOS violation. Even if the scraping was done by a third party, Ross probably has an account with them and would be bound by their terms. There is no "database" copyright in the US. (The EU has it, among others). So they couldn't assert copyright on the raw "collection". If they are smart/devious, they may have modified these documents in such a way that it does not change the legal meaning, but clears the barrier for a derivative work. Adding cartoons would be my idea, but it's too easy to remove. Adding some fancy formatting might do the trick, or changing the citation style.