Lets say you have a 30 page pdf that is free. It says "This is a free e-book and may be freely distributed as long all content and links remain intact" What does intact mean in this context? Does it mean it has to stay as a pdf or what? So would it be legal to take the all the content from the pdf and put it on my website, and spit it up among multiple pages? What I want to do is somthing like this. Take the first 2 pages from the pdf.. put it on a web page. At the bottom, it would say "click here for page 2" Next page would have the next couple pages from the pdf... "click here for page 3" Next couple pages from pdf "page 4" etc. etc.
The disclaimer seems to mention the content and not the format of the document. Why don't you just contact the author and ask them if you can use their content if you give them credit on the site. Sounds like that's why they wrote it in the first place.
I think it's obvious that they meant you can re-distribute it in its native .pdf form only in order to keep the links, formatting, etc as is. They probably have affiliate links embedded, etc.
I believe it means the following - thank you eddy! "Well, yes it would mean that and also that you cannot edit, remove or add anything to it. Basically distribute it as it is provided to you. Nothing more and nothing less."
In the textual sense, this is pretty simple. E-book is a format. They are informing you that the product may be freely distributed in its entirety. It doesn't say you have the right to break up the product and use. Making the PDF into web pages would be breaking up the product and technically a violation of their terms (as printed above). I would contact them with your idea. They might not mind if you keep everything in the same layout fashion.