No. The first paragraph of that site states "the Ruby on Rails Tutorial book is available for free online."

I am refering to the screencasts - buying them from a publisher company as DVD's for half price or directly from the author for full price

One of the HN guidelines is "please don't use HN posts to ask YC-funded companies questions that you could ask by emailing them." Similarly, I think you might get a more authoritative answer to your question if you contacted the author directly.

http://ruby.railstutorial.org/contact