Are the AI companies also destroying the digital scans they made?
AI companies are shredding rare books
201–210 of 559 posts
Re: AI companies are shredding rare books
#202absolutely diabolical
Re: AI companies are shredding rare books
#203I'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…
I have even less sympathy for IP stealing LLM operators
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Re: AI companies are shredding rare books
#204Earlier 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…
No, courts so far in the jurisdictions which have heard such cases, have ruled it's fair use. There is plenty of ongoing litigation in many jurisdictions, so it's way too early to just decree "it's been determined". It likely won't be for years to come.
Re: AI companies are shredding rare books
#205They 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…
The alternative (throwing books away for no good reason) isn't much more reasonable.
Re: AI companies are shredding rare books
#206In a society that values science and knowledge, preservation of knowledge - and no, slurping text up into an LLM is not preservation - is more important than profits.
These companies are regressive book burners.
Re: AI companies are shredding rare books
#207They 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…
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Re: AI companies are shredding rare books
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a bizarre comparison. Weeding is the natural process of disposing of less-demand books. Like the rest of us, libraries operate in finite space, so if they want new books, they have to remove ones their users aren't using. Most libraries will try to sell books before disposing of them in any destructive way. What similarities do you see here?
People are very desperate to try to claim that something that's somewhat obviously morally wrong is actually highly nuanced, because it makes them feel uncomfortable.
I would disagree on the "obviously morally wrong". What's the alternative for the books if they were "saved" from the fate of being scanned and shredded? How many rare books have you personally brought in the last year? Not everything that's ever created needs to be preserved forever.
Re: AI companies are shredding rare books
#209That's one way to pull the ladder if regulatory capture fails...
Re: AI companies are shredding rare books
#210Can only blame AI companies to a limited extent. This is apparently the legal way to do things because of stupid copyright laws.
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