AI companies are shredding rare books • Hacker News Board

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#181

Post by ButlerianJihad » Mon, Jul 27, 2026, 2:17 PM UTC

phoghed wrote: post #175

ShinyLeftPad wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have even less sympathy for IP stealing LLM operators

It’s been determined that training on lawfully acquired works is fair use. Presumably in this discussion of shredding physical books Dario and Sam are not pulling heists at the local library. I’m sure there’s ongoing litigation, and better sources than this, but fair use was determined in June 2025 in a sf federal district court https://www.goodwinlaw.com/en/insights/publications/2025/06/... Similar conclusion vs met…

You don’t know what “Fair Use” is.

Fair Use is not an activity that you engage in. Fair Use is not a category with criteria that you meet. Fair Use is not a precedent that paves the way for everything afterwards.

Fair Use is a defense that can be used in court when you’re named in a copyright lawsuit. Fair Use is how you justify your actions before the court finds infringement.

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#182

Post by phoghed » Mon, Jul 27, 2026, 2:17 PM UTC

9dev wrote: post #89

soco wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only issue I see is, how could you tell which are those books?

We manage to do this for endangered wildlife too without anyone counting every single specimen; why shouldn’t we be able to estimate how rare a book is?

And if you instituted this, the commenters of this very website would surely decry it as a prime example of government overstep and waste.

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#183

Post by BoxOfRain » Mon, Jul 27, 2026, 2:18 PM UTC

pfdietz wrote: post #177

iandanforth wrote: post #168

If true this is basically unforgivable. The wanton destruction of history is the stuff of the Third Reich and the Taliban. You simply cannot profess to care about knowledge, culture, or civilization while destroying the physical manifestations of the same.

Yes, actually you can. The fetish of physical book worship is a fossil of an age when information storage and retrieval was much harder.

I strongly disagree with this take, a book might remain readable thousands of years from now but very few if not zero of our digital data formats likely will. We shouldn't be so quick to throw away diversity in the way information which may be useful for future generations is stored for the long term.

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#184

Post by parineum » Mon, Jul 27, 2026, 2:18 PM UTC

phoghed wrote: post #175

ShinyLeftPad wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have even less sympathy for IP stealing LLM operators

It’s been determined that training on lawfully acquired works is fair use. Presumably in this discussion of shredding physical books Dario and Sam are not pulling heists at the local library. I’m sure there’s ongoing litigation, and better sources than this, but fair use was determined in June 2025 in a sf federal district court https://www.goodwinlaw.com/en/insights/publications/2025/06/... Similar conclusion vs met…

[flagged]

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#185

Post by nailer » Mon, Jul 27, 2026, 2:19 PM UTC

Direct link: https://x.com/HedgieMarkets/status/2081534588485296565

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#186

Post by andrepd » Mon, Jul 27, 2026, 2:19 PM UTC

thechao wrote: post #4

Which book that was rare was destroyed? I'm interested to know a few titles.

Rare or not, destroying books is in itself a morally repugnant act. I don't know man, it's not so long ago we used to view nazi book burnings as an archetype of evil. Today companies are offering book-burning-as-a-service and it hardly causes a stir.

Bearded German man was right.

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#187

Post by parineum » Mon, Jul 27, 2026, 2:19 PM UTC

ButlerianJihad wrote: post #181

phoghed wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s been determined that training on lawfully acquired works is fair use. Presumably in this discussion of shredding physical books Dario and Sam are not pulling heists at the local library. I’m sure there’s ongoing litigation, and better sources than this, but fair use was determined in June 2025 in a sf federal district court https://www.goodwinlaw.com/en/insights/publications/2025/06/... Similar conclusion vs met…

You don’t know what “Fair Use” is. Fair Use is not an activity that you engage in. Fair Use is not a category with criteria that you meet. Fair Use is not a precedent that paves the way for everything afterwards. Fair Use is a defense that can be used in court when you’re named in a copyright lawsuit. Fair Use is how you justify your actions before the court finds infringement.

s/fair use/ip theft

The comment uses the same language as it's parent.

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#188

Post by iamsaitam » Mon, Jul 27, 2026, 2:20 PM UTC

If you consider that AI companies should pay the same for a book, as a person does, you should read about royalties.

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#189

Post by streetfighter64 » Mon, Jul 27, 2026, 2:21 PM UTC

999900000999 wrote: post #164

They should be forced to publicly release the books as an Ebook. Leave it up for anyone to download and then compensate the copyright holders later. In fact if ingesting these books for LLMs is fair use, us commoners should be able to read them for free. Maybe restrict commercial redistribution though.

There's a bunch of details regarding LLMs and copyright, but I don't see how

> They should be forced to publicly release the books as an Ebook.

would be reasonable in any way? The books aren't theirs to release publicly. If I brought a copy of any given movie on DVD, ripped it and used it to train my own "LLM" located at /dev/null, should I then be allowed (or even forced) to release the movie publicly for anyone to watch for free?

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#190

Post by ryanmcbride » Mon, Jul 27, 2026, 2:21 PM UTC

kasey_junk wrote: post #124

squidbeak wrote: post #114

I've limited sympathy for the publishers. It pisses me off to reflect that they can sit on works until copyright expires, keeping them out of print. There's no real need for any of these so-called rare books to be rare while they're under copyright. And related to this, the books that are in print are mostly only in print in the shittiest way. I often see well-made books from the 17th or 18th centuries which are stil…

Books in the 17th and 18th century often didnt get bound by the publisher. They were done by independent binders for _custom_ orders. You’d see whole libraries with the owners binding/cover standards rather than per book. Books in that time were _luxury_ goods. Most people could not afford them. One of the ways that was changed was to introduce cheap, mass produced bindings that were lower quality than the bespoke ar…

Learning this fact is what got me interested into binding my own books!

With how the quality of things seems to have been degrading over the years (either real or just me getting older and experiencing the impermanence of all things) I've been trying to adopt an attitude of "if this practice existed before the industrial revolution, I can _probably_ do it" and it's been really great to learn how things were made before they had to be mass produced as cheaply as possible.