Can't LLMs now just write books that aren't publicly available?
Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)
251–260 of 368 posts
Re: Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
I too think Basic Income is a necessity. I don't think it can happen in the US (for cultural reasons) but I think elsewhere it can work. (And indeed in many places it kinda, sorta, already does). >> That would enable the authors, activists and hackers to pursue what's meaningful I would counsel not using the word "meaningful" in the context of BI. We already have a way of evaluating "meaningful", it's called "money".…
I disagree with your definition of meaningful here. Society's willingness to pay is certainly a signal for meaning in an output but it seems quite inaccurate. Think of the number of artists and thinkers that weren't recognised in their lifetimes, their work was still meaningful but society hadn't discovered it yet. Similarly, there are a number of things that would be incredibly meaningful to all of society (eradicat…
BI does not stop people doing meaningful things. Society will (mostly) reward things which add value. We have a very efficient system for that, and it doesn't go away under BI.
We are already spending massive amounts of money on disease, fusion and so on. There's no issue there, and BI doesn't move that needle.
At the moment society (especially in the US) operates on a "add value or starve" basis. (That's an over simplification, but the underlying "morality" us strong in that direction.)
BI moves the needle for those who are not "adding value" (in a materialistic sense.) Artists and Authors are free to spend their time creating works, of which a rounding error will have any value. Sure there's some unappreciated author out there cranking out literature, but there's also everyone else cranking out rubbish.
BI doesn't make 'big things' easier to do. Arguably it makes them harder. Rather it allows individuals to gain satisfaction from little things. Budding poets can write all day long. But if (great) poetry is currently ignored, do not expect much on that front.
I say this not to denigrate BI but rather because allowing the meaningless is precisely its goal. To miss that is to miss the point. It allows people to find worth and dignity without having to add value to society.
Re: Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm glad your username specifies your location. My biggest pet peeve online these days is someone telling a story about "my country" but never specifying which country that is.
We sell ebooks in every country, including Tunisia - https://www.ebooks.com/en-tn/ . I understand that the price of books is sometimes prohibitive, but it's largely outside our control.
The issue is not the amount; it's the currency. Ours is not convertible.
To put it into perspective: even *free* services can be completely inaccessible here if they require payment info for verification purposes.
Acquiring hard currency to spend online is truly a bureaucratic nightmare, and even if you manage it, the annual limit is strictly capped (at around $300).
Re: Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)
#254I live in Canada but was born in Italy.
I want to often buy books in Italian (digital) and it's incredibly complicated because licensing deals are never for people speaking Italian in Canada.
You often need an Italian credit card to pay.
The digital world is crazy.
Re: Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
Knowledge is free as in *free beer once in a while because you genuinely can’t pay*, not free as in *scale up the freemium model, keep grabbing free stuff daily, weekly, monthly, and then start running your own pub with the free beers you took from the neighboring pub.* This discussion is intellectually dishonest. Either some people here genuinely dont understand the concepts of kindness and gratitude, or they do und…
But then we step back a little further and ask what this thing that is called property, why should any human be granted any beyond what actually constitute them as an entity of their own. What matter at the end of the day is not what the document pretend about who possess what, but how people feel in their life, what they can access to, and what they are bared to access for which actual reason. It can't even be purel…
Property may be a social construct, but the costs of living are not.
You can question ownership in the abstract, and I am not even against that conversation. But that does not answer the actual point here. We still live in a world where food, rent, healthcare, clothing, hygiene, servers, tools, and time all cost money.
So if someone gives something away out of kindness, access, public benefit, or community spirit, that does not automatically mean everyone else is entitled to industrialize that kindness for their own business.
Open source is not a mystical anti-property pact.
Open source is not a contract where people are expected to provide endless unpaid labour for others to build businesses on top of. At some point this stops being a discussion about sharing knowledge and becomes a way to justify taking advantage of people’s work.
I just don't like these replies, if this was sarcasm, it might not have worked for me. I just find these social comparisons deeply unserious when the discussions are against theft or harm done to actual people with actual human needs.
Re: Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
I too think Basic Income is a necessity. I don't think it can happen in the US (for cultural reasons) but I think elsewhere it can work. (And indeed in many places it kinda, sorta, already does). >> That would enable the authors, activists and hackers to pursue what's meaningful I would counsel not using the word "meaningful" in the context of BI. We already have a way of evaluating "meaningful", it's called "money".…
> I don't think it can happen in the US (for cultural reasons) Cultural reasons are just a matter of spindoctoring/propaganda. Nixon almost implemented a form of UBI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Assistance_Plan In Alaska there's already a form of UBI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund
The reason I think it is hard in the US is because there is a very strong "work or die" ethic in the US. Everything is driven by money. Even basic things like healthcare are driven by money. Your life after retirement is determined by how much money you accumulated. The word-association between "poor" and "lazy" is strong. Taxation should be light. Each man should keep what he accumulates.
BI by contrast values people over money. It recognises not just the social responsibility of the rich to the poor, but also the dignity of being human.
Some countries are further along that path than others. Health care, education, unemployment benefits, are all steps towards BI. The wealthy are taxed to pay for the poor. Ultimately the suppresses the excess, while raising the floor.
From a cultural point of view, the US has many steps to take before society is really for (real) BI.
Re: Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
JK Rowling is the exception. The duration is one thing, but so are her proceeds. Most authors are never going to see that much money, if any, from writing. Maybe copyright would expire once the original author has made enough money to pay for lavish living expenses for themselves for the rest of their life, inflation adjusted. So their family wouldn't automatically be taken care of, but they are. Kind of weird too th…
If most authors don't make much money, if any, then what is the point of copyright? It only really seems to benefit publishers.
I'm not here to defend publishers or the insane current copyright terms. However, in the traditional model of publishing, publishers subsidize production of new books from unproven authors--through book advances, copyediting services, and printing and distribution costs--via the money they make on the few successful and very few ultra-successful books.
If you take away copyright, you reduce the revenue of publishers, which reduces the number of unproven authors they can take chances on. (They're not very good at picking winners from the pool of new author manuscripts, not nearly as good as "agents" like to think they are, but that doesn't matter; they still wouldn't be able to take as many chances.)
Re: Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Knowledge should be free. It was never created in a vacuum. This is a common perspective on HN, but it's so jarring. Someone violates an open-source license and we grab our pitchforks. Someone pirates books and it's fine - really, the authors should be thanking us. Good books are incredibly challenging to write, more so than good software. It's not like you grab Harry Potter and say "I'm just gonna change character…
If this is not bad faith argument, then I don't what is. When someone is violating an OSS licence, they are doing it for commercial gains and monetary profit. Nobody is angry at someone using FOSS software for himself with no money getting involved. As opposed to that, books, movies are pirated for personal consumption. Not monetary gains. If someone bought a $30 book, and then ran a BaaS with millions of VC money in…
> When someone is violating an OSS licence
It’s worth pointing out that violating a FOSS license is ALWAYS about denying users rights the upstream already gave them. Violating a FOSS license is stealing from your users.
Re: Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now that AI is decimating a lot of bullshit jobs we need a basic income of some kind. A universal one. That would enable the authors, activists and hackers to pursue what's meaningful, instead of the profit of the multinational leeches that do not need to adhere to laws, borders or taxes. If a zillion dollar corporations (Meta and the likes) can torrent Annas Archive and decimate the copyrights I see it a moral imper…
I too think Basic Income is a necessity. I don't think it can happen in the US (for cultural reasons) but I think elsewhere it can work. (And indeed in many places it kinda, sorta, already does). >> That would enable the authors, activists and hackers to pursue what's meaningful I would counsel not using the word "meaningful" in the context of BI. We already have a way of evaluating "meaningful", it's called "money".…
> We already have a way of evaluating "meaningful", it's called "money".
This is a mechanism that’s very narrow and creates notable distortions between financial and artistic value, just to keep the example specific enough.
Re: Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
If this is not bad faith argument, then I don't what is. When someone is violating an OSS licence, they are doing it for commercial gains and monetary profit. Nobody is angry at someone using FOSS software for himself with no money getting involved. As opposed to that, books, movies are pirated for personal consumption. Not monetary gains. If someone bought a $30 book, and then ran a BaaS with millions of VC money in…
If knowledge is to be free, that means there should be no restrictions on how it is used. Even an open source license misses the point, because the implication is still that one person can dictate how another person can make use of knowledge. It’s still premised on the same dystopian view that a person can own an idea.
> Even an open source license misses the point, because the implication is still that one person can dictate how another person can make use of knowledge
To be considered open source software, the license cannot impose any restrictions on how the software is used. You are free to use the software for whatever purpose you want.