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…
Some source or citation or context is needed here, is this the work of a 2 person no profit or a trillion valued pre IPO company?
You call of dishonest framing, but you're begging the question twice. Once that AI companies are really shredding 200 year old rare books, and once that libraries are only weeding mass market pulp fiction.
That is literally what this article is about.
The "article" in question is a tweet. The "rare botanical text" is just an example the author of the tweet made up in order to generate sympathy.
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.
Fair use is a legal defense with a specific test to demonstrate whether a particular instance of use of a copyrighted work is not infringement. Although fair use is always evaluated on a case by case basis, fair use does produce some precedent (example at [1], not related to TFA), and fair use is not mere justification [2]:
> Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work... is not an infringement of copyright.
From 1984: "Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right."
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…
Is slightly modifying some weights in a markov chain somewhere really preserving it's contents?
It's not really Markov chain as you need full P(x_t|x_{t-1}, x_{t-2}... x_1) instead of just P(x_t|x_{t-1}).
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.
Why did Anthropic settle with authors for 1.5 billion then? Surely their lawyers must have decided there's a pretty good chance of judges ultimately deciding that it is copyright infringement?
> 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?
It might be me but I fail to see the equivalence of AI companies with thirst deaths. That', or maybe because it's a strawman.
The point is that you can buy a book for a few bucks, read it, and have its insights completely available to you. But people are demanding that LLM companies pay far more to publishers for the same copies