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AI companies are shredding rare books

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Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#361

Post by pfdietz »

ComputerPerson wrote: post #242
palmotea wrote: post #82

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…

If I did that I'd seal them with silica gel to keep the humidity down.

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#362

Post by pessimizer »

godshatter wrote: post #196
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…

Is slightly modifying some weights in a markov chain somewhere really preserving it's contents?

They used to put them all up on books.google.com until they were ordered not to if they were less that 100 years old. Most of the stuff that was accessible was copied to archive.org, and almost all of that stuff ended up on annas-archive and library genesis.

Consequently, many/most books are more available now than they've ever been. This is mostly a copyright question, not a question of preservation. I say mostly, because those scans, without redundancy and fingerprinting, can be changed and bowdlerized in the future without remaining physical copies as a reference.

I own about 3500 print books, and started a project to find scans for all of them (that I need to get back to.) Average publication year is probably around 1975, and the bulk ranging from the 1940s to the 2000s. I made it through about 1500, and couldn't find maybe 40, most of them bad. e.g. self-published stuff like "My God Heals, Does Yours?" This was a few years ago, if I went through those 40 now, I bet I'd find half of them.

I hate what the AI companies are getting away with, but only because they get to violate copyright while being aggressive enforcers of copyright and DRM circumvention laws. Destructive scanning, however, is a cheap way to get a good copy of a book online. If that book were then put in a place where teveryone interested in its contents (or who are just hoarders) can get a hold of it, you'll be able to find a verifiable copy of it 1000 years from now.

As of now, Russia and annas-archive are just a few points of failure that can erase those words forever. It will be done with armed, uniformed men, and people will claim it is not dystopia, but justice. I don't want the only copy of the text of a book to lie in the interpretation of some privately trained LLM.

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#363

Post by jolmg »

eudamoniac wrote: post #330
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…

I've never read a coherent argument for why all of these "should"s should be. I understand you want to read the books. But I don't see how that desire results in the laws needing to be changed so that you can read everything you want, even things the author or owner doesn't want you to read. There is not a shortage of books in print. I don't understand why people get so hung up on a few of them being out of print. It…

> There is not a shortage of books in print. I don't understand why people get so hung up on a few of them being out of print.

Because the point isn't so much in reading whatever text as if all text is the same. The point is the spreading of knowledge. A single book can contain knowledge not present in any other.

> But I don't see how that desire results in the laws needing to be changed so that you can read everything you want

In order for your "people" (country, etc.) to do better, you want them to be educated. In order for people to understand one another, you want them to be able to see all the same various perspectives there are. It makes perfect sense for laws to aim for these goals. This is why libraries exist.

> It is okay for someone to own something cool and not let anyone see it. The cool thing doesn't suddenly become a societal necessity because it is words written down.

Books aren't simply trinkets, like an item you bought at a gift-shop.

> I understand you want to read the books.

I think you're looking at this too much as what people want for their own individual selves, when it's more of what people want for everyone. It's about what they believe is best for society as a whole. They don't need to want to read a book themselves.

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#364

Post by sosodev »

Aurornis wrote: post #281
trollbridge wrote: post #69

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…

> And no, no AI company has ever come to us and asked to run training on all of our scanned copies The value of most very old books for AI training is very low. You don’t really want your AI training data to start biasing toward outdated writing styles. Most of the valuable knowledge has been covered again in modern texts in more depth and detail. There is interesting value in old texts and it’s important to have the…

If you only care about facts, maybe. Even then I'm sure there are countless facts not described outside of old books.

I have a hard time believing that text valuable to humans would not be valuable to AI.

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#366

Post by dpark »

cestith wrote: post #236
sethops1 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Aren't they shredding only the books still under copyright protection? How is an 18th century botanical text still under copyright? It's cheaper to scan the books if you do it destructively. Cost. That's why they're shredding irreplaceable texts. Nothing to do with copyright. https://www.404media.co/ai-companies-are-buying-tons-of-old-...

One doesn’t need to pulp the pages after scanning though. After scanning, they could be rebound and put into a library.

That would be a clear case of copyright infringement under current law. You can’t make a copy of a book and then give the original to someone else.

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#367

Post by HedonicEscal8r »

shimman wrote: post #228
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…

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.

Yup, and IP theft is morally good. Are we not on HackerNews?

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#368

Post by mwigdahl »

59percentmore wrote: post #319

Literally Rainbows End. Vinge was an oracle. It's a real shame that no one ever got that book in front of Hayao Miyazaki's eyes.

Well, an oracle except for that part in the same book where unlimited access to the internet made all children prodigies self-motivated by their love of learning.

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#369

Post by glaslong »

bitwize wrote: post #243
chii wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

If Elon Musk is dying of thirst then the price of that glass of water is set at (pinky to side of mouth) one million dollars.

Given his approximate Trillionaire status, this is just what every vending machine doing income-based algorithmic pricing should charge him for EVERY bottle of water.

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#370

Post by this_was_posted »

thdr wrote: post #317
giancarlostoro wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> copyright should just die with the author That would have a few undesirable consequences... for example, you wouldn't hire a 70 year old writer for your commercial project no matter how brilliant they are. The complexity of our legal system is in many cases justified. The problems are often the numbers (duration of copyright protection etc.)

Then just make it the rule that the copyright expires after 30 years or when the author dies, whichever comes last.
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