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AI companies are shredding rare books

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Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#61

Post by D13Fd »

Springtime wrote: post #48

It seems a key contention of theirs is the possibility that rare books are being destroyed this way, yet the things they cite don't seem to suggest this (based on their paraphrasing), they just throw the following at the end to make it seem like it's occurring to irreplaceable books: > You can't replace the last three copies of an 18th-century botanical text once someone shreds them for training data. And the judge s…

There is zero reason to shred 18th century books. Any such books are out of copyright.

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#64

Post by breezybottom »

stuartjohnson12 wrote: post #9

I think people are, on the whole, too precious about old things. In the case of books produced after major commercial printing began, I don't believe it is the paper that imbues the book with historical value. Indeed, I think there's a high chance that this process increases preservation of the most relevant part of the media - the actual content! There are tons of old rolls of film slowly rotting away in warehouses…

That's only true if you think digital storage has more longevity than paper. It doesn't.

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#66

Post by vessenes »

orthoxerox wrote: post #11
vessenes wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the last great near-term predictor. I often wish he'd written more. To remind us all, he predicted shred and scan would be a short stop over done by villains on the way to nondestructive scanning. That said, supporting Anna's archive is one of the best things you could do for humanity long term in my opinion.

Were they the villains? I remember the rogue three-letter-agency executive being the BBEG.

I think some villainy is implied by "billionaire-backed-woodchipping of a library," but it's just my interpretation, no actual knowledge of Vinge's perspective.

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#67

Post by flipped »

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…

[dead]

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#69

Post by trollbridge »

We reprint old books after checking out copyrights (for all books, this means pre-1930, but for some (I'd actually say most) it also means ones published up to 1964 and 1973, depending on how the rightsholders did (or didn't) do the renewals).

We use a special guillotine type cutter to cut off the binding and then store the pages in a sealed plastic bag which goes in the archives; they're stored there indefinitely in case the book needs rescanned for some reason. We also keep the original, uncompressed copies of the books on magnetic disks.

We also go out of our way to try to find rare books published in 1931, 1932, etc. so they are ready to go once the copyright expires.

And no, no AI company has ever come to us and asked to run training on all of our scanned copies.

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#70

Post by swed420 »

DarkIye wrote: post #63

This is the opposite of a book burning. These books which only a few would ever know the names of, let alone find, let alone read, are being digitised so they can be found in electronic searches.

> are being digitised so they can be found in electronic searches

What guarantee do we have that the book contents will be served unfiltered and unaltered?

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