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AI companies are shredding rare books

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Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#51

Post by chii »

tencentshill wrote: post #43
ACCount37 wrote: post #10

The publishers sued AI companies for training on shadow library data, hoping to negotiate content deals for big $$$ down the line. Instead, they got analog hole'd. Turns out that buying an old book for $5 and destructively scanning it for $25 is way cheaper than paying extortion fees to the copyright-mongers. What I don't buy is it being "rare, precious books". First, they're not after ancient texts - they're after t…

So they're not valuable... except to AI companies. They should pay a fair amount.

> They should pay a fair amount.

they should pay the marginal value that the next buyer would buy.

Do you also think that a person dying of thirst ought to pay the maximum price they could possibly pay for water?

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#52

Post by ACCount37 »

tencentshill wrote: post #43
ACCount37 wrote: post #10

The publishers sued AI companies for training on shadow library data, hoping to negotiate content deals for big $$$ down the line. Instead, they got analog hole'd. Turns out that buying an old book for $5 and destructively scanning it for $25 is way cheaper than paying extortion fees to the copyright-mongers. What I don't buy is it being "rare, precious books". First, they're not after ancient texts - they're after t…

So they're not valuable... except to AI companies. They should pay a fair amount.

They are paying a fair amount. In the ballpark of $5 per book.

You know, piracy online is nice and simple - but it's kind of hard to get physical media without paying what the previous owner considers "a fair amount" to part with it.

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#53

Post by infinite_spin »

Invictus0 wrote: post #41
infinite_spin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you purchased the Mona Lisa (or some rare book), in this hypothetical, you can burn it.

> For instance, a painter may insist on proper attribution of their painting, and in some instances may sue the owner of the physical painting for destroying the painting even if the owner of the painting lawfully owned it.[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Artists_Rights_Act

The Mona Lisa's painter isn't alive, they can't sue, and this act doesn't apply to printed books. You're expanding the hypothetical to say "also you're under a specific set of laws that forbid exactly the thing I questioned".. that's moving the goalpost.

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#56

Post by ACCount37 »

infinite_spin wrote: post #22
Cynddl wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 404media article mentions notably https://nltimes.nl/2026/06/25/rare-book-dealers-fear-tech-fi... which says: > The attachment contained 3,000 English-language titles organized by ISBN number, including books such as Distinct Element Modelling in Geomechanics by K.R. Saxena (1999); Barrett's Traditional Fairy Tales (2021), an academic study of Irish folklore; and Laser Shock Peening of Advanced Ceramics by Pratik…

> Barrett's Traditional Fairy Tales (2021) How is a book from 2021 considered rare in this context? There's almost certainly a digital copy of it in existence prior to Anthropic purchasing a print edition.

Niche text. It's not impossible that there was only ever under a thousand of them printed and released into circulation.

A digital copy would exist somewhere, of course. But for us, that only matters if we can buy or download it. And for AI companies, that only matters if they can get a digital copy DRM-free and licensed permissively enough.

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#58

Post by lejalv »

pu_pe wrote: post #50

From what I understand, the rare books in question are not some historically relevant medieval manuscripts, but rather some relatively recent books (still under copyright) for which there are few print copies available for purchase. I am not sure that physically destructing one copy of this type of book to preserve its contents digitally is so bad. Pretty much anything that is still under copyright should be valuable…

"To preserve them digitally"

For whom? is the relevant question

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#59

Post by D13Fd »

This is the result of our copyright law in the United States, which is extremely tilted to favor authors and publishers. The judge made exactly the right call and the companies are following the law.

The fix here is to change the law to permit training AI without destroying the original materials. But that is going to be a heavy lift.

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#60

Post by swed420 »

azan_ wrote: post #33

The comments there are absolutely unhinged. There are some good reasons for being anti-AI, but why dilute it with this kind of bullshit: > It is equivalent to book burning in the past. A form of thought control

> why dilute it with this kind of bullshit:

> > It is equivalent to book burning in the past. A form of thought control

That's only bullshit if you trust AI companies to serve the book contents without alteration.

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