271–280 of 559 posts
Luckily I don't live in NYC where book hoarders are being evicted because of "fire hazard". Just like in Fahrenheit 451.
Reminds me of Blood Meridian where The Judge meticulously sketches the rock glyphs that he comes across, and then destroys the original. Now that I think about it, The Judge is an apt metaphor for AI : "Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent."
No, it isn't. Nothing about training a model requires this. You're thinking of copyright, which does treat information this way.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would say that especially for books out of copyright, they are unquestionably legally in the right. There is no legal standing for "I like books and it makes me feel squicky when someone disrespects them". Nothing stops you from buying old books and using them as decoupage[1] fodder, using them to start a campfire, or making paper airplanes out of their paper. Moreover, while it is emotionally appealing to some peo…
I agree. As for making the scans available: They could give a copy of the data once to some third party organisation that then seeds it in bittorrent or something like that. Basically, what I want to say is that this doesn't need to be an ongoing obligation for the scanner to be worthwhile for society.
Isn't this the legal requirement for digitizing books usually? I dont like that its being done, but I feel the direction of anger for this one is misplaced. Or at least partially misplaced.
This is potentially very bad. Like, Library of Alexandria or Council of Nicaea bad. We may never be able to recover the information if, say, one of these AI companies copied or translated it wrong then destroyed the source material. Maybe it's from bad OCR, or maybe from a bad actor - but there are a lot of ways history and information could change in this game-of-telephone like transfer of knowledge. What is the poi…
It is the cheapest way to get them scanned.
It is the fastest way to get them scanned.
It doesn't need to be safely archived for another century until it is resold to someone that has not yet been born.
This is potentially very bad. Like, Library of Alexandria or Council of Nicaea bad. We may never be able to recover the information if, say, one of these AI companies copied or translated it wrong then destroyed the source material. Maybe it's from bad OCR, or maybe from a bad actor - but there are a lot of ways history and information could change in this game-of-telephone like transfer of knowledge. What is the poi…
The main reason is the machines they use to scan books at scale destroy the books in the process.
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…
A friend proposed that copyright should just die with the author and / or their spouse and I'm left agreeing. I want books and music to be less strict on copyright. Some of my favorite YouTube channels break down music and songs, and go as far as recreating beats / tracks from famous hip hop songs, but someone at a record label company dings every one of their videos, they can barely sample a few seconds, its VERY CL…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Might surprise people to learn but the law isn't the final arbiter on what is moral or just. The law only decides what is legal and as we've seen over our lived history as humans, many "legal" things may not be those we want society to uphold.
Yes IP theft and fair use are discussing legality, not morality. Whether or not it’s moral for someone to make money off somebody else’s labor or Reddit comments, I don’t want to get into a discussion about personally.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We reprint old books after checking out copyrights Who is we? > then store the pages in a sealed plastic bag which goes in the archives; they're stored there indefinitely Is that the best thing for archival storage? Like could things like chemical breakdown increase the humidity in the sealed bag or concentrate corrosive chemical vapors? I was under the impression the best environment was an actively climate-contro…
The issue is mold. Sealed plastic bags for old books is a recipe for mold. At least they're individually stored, so they would develop mold at independent rates. (And maybe the seal allows airflow.) Most books have some mold by the time they're ~100 years old, it's just not enough to cause a serious problem. Sealed enclosures (wrappings, bags, tubs) are a nightmare situation. Even packing books too tighly on shelves…