Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AI companies are shredding rare books

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

531–540 of 559 posts

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#531

Post by fragmede »

starkparker wrote: post #280
ComputerPerson wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Dealing with mold in an archival environment is a nightmare, and yeah, the only thing sealing the books in plastic does is make it easier to either throw them away, or to freeze them to try to kill and then manually clean out the mold. https://www.nedcc.org/free-resources/preservation-leaflets/3...

How about irradiating them? Would kill the mold without the humidity problems.

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#532

Post by goldlimetea »

efreak wrote: post #498
goldlimetea wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[dead]

The DMCA doesn't care exactly how the authorization works, it only cares that it's needed. Quote from Wikipedia[0] of DMCA section 103: > No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title. > "circumvent a technological measure" means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or…

[dead]

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#533

Post by DrScientist »

account42 wrote: post #521
DrScientist wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For inventions if you don't make money off it in the first 20 years you are unlikely to ever make any money off it - as the invention space moves on. That's not the same for a work of fiction or a piece of music. Case in point apparently books sales for the Odyssey are massively up - when it was originally written in 7-8 BC :-) Also most books etc don't make much, if any money - an publisher/author might rely on a th…

> That's not the same for a work of fiction or a piece of music. Case in point apparently books sales for the Odyssey are massively up - when it was originally written in 7-8 BC :-) And it was written without copyright. So why should the rest of us give up part of our free speech rights for longer than 20 years in order to enrich authors, when its proven that we can get great works without doing that? The question is…

> it's whether society benefits as a whole.

There is a big difference between not being able to republish or cut and paste from the works of JK Rowling and not being able to make and sell an electric motor.

ie my point was that in terms of societal benefit there is a big difference between IP protection and copyright.

JK Rowling managed to write Harry Potter series despite it reusing lots of well worn tropes. I fail to see how it's existence is stopping other people being equally creative.

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#534

Post by DrScientist »

delecti wrote: post #463
DrScientist wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For inventions if you don't make money off it in the first 20 years you are unlikely to ever make any money off it - as the invention space moves on. That's not the same for a work of fiction or a piece of music. Case in point apparently books sales for the Odyssey are massively up - when it was originally written in 7-8 BC :-) Also most books etc don't make much, if any money - an publisher/author might rely on a th…

My personal preference is actually a flat 50 years. I think that if an author writes something at 25 and it doesn't blow up until they're 75, I think that's given them more than a fair chance to capitalize on it. My real point though is that IMO, whatever duration we pick shouldn't depend on the creator. It would tend to undervalue their later creations, treats corporations differently from people in a way that doesn…

Ultimately the existence of the Odyssey doesn't stop you writing your own story - the creative universe is infinite.

This is completely different from IP around an invention - you don't want a single entity owning the rights the wheel forever - that would stymie human progess.

So I don't think it's right to conflate the two.

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#535

Post by uslic001 »

Vernor Vinge wrote a book that had this as part of the plot.

The book you are looking for is Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge. Published in 2006, it features a fictional undertaking called the Librareome Project.

Facebook ·Artificial Intelligence News Key Details from the Novel The Process: Physical library books are fed into industrial machines that shred the pages and blast them through a camera tunnel at high speeds. The Technology: High-resolution cameras photograph the flying paper shreds, and software uses the unique tear marks to piece the text back together (similar to shotgun sequencing in genetics). The Conflict: The story depicts public protests and pushback from people who want physical, analog books preserved rather than violently digitized and destroyed.

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#536

Post by voakbasda »

nomel wrote: post #476
voakbasda wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about that last point for a moment. Our “rights to read” are diminished significantly with digital works as compared to printed works. Right of resale. Right to lend. In the end, digital publishing just isn’t right and will lead to massive gap in our historical records. They require active curation and cannot be preserved simply by resting on a dusty shelf.

> Our “rights to read” are diminished significantly with digital works as compared to printed works. I see it as opposite. I can hand someone the complete contents of a public library on a thumb drive. Delivering that to their door is going to be much trickier. Reading and distribution (pirate like) has been made MUCH easier, with non-physical distribution. I'm always carrying a 1" thick book in my pocket, that I can…

That’s fine as long as you acknowledge that you are breaking the law and infringing the rights of all of the authors of said works who do not want their works disseminated in that way.

If you are willing to give a middle finger to the law, sure, the world is your oyster.

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#537

Post by tracker1 »

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…

That's one that really gets me... if I'm buying a classic work or reprint, I'd really like a decent copy that can be handed down generationally... no such thing gets published today. I can understand a technical manual or programming book being printed in a lesser quality, even some education materials as they're likely to only be read through maybe once and maybe sparsely used for reference.

I can even understand the cheaper novel prints... but there should be decent hard back/cover copies that are much higher quality than what we see today. There's really zero excuse for it. Other than general enshitification we see everywhere.

I think if a work is out of publication/availability for over a decade, then copyright should maybe be forfeit altogether. Especially, if that would include digital copies, that has pretty much zero production cost.

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#538

Post by palmotea »

qingcharles wrote: post #488
pfdietz wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that the fibers in paper can become brittle if they are too dry. However, this doesn't cause the paper to break down, it just makes it vulnerable to damage if flexed. So storing paper dry is fine if it is then humidified before being stressed.

It's possible. My only experience is with vintage newspapers that were allowed to dry out, and then when trying to open them just shatter like a carbonized volcano scroll.

Though newspapers are printed on some of the lowest quality paper possible, so they're probably suffering from other issues than just dryness.

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#539

Post by TaLiTr »

wwweston wrote: post #131
ACCount37 wrote: post #10

The publishers sued AI companies for training on shadow library data, hoping to negotiate content deals for big $$$ down the line. Instead, they got analog hole'd. Turns out that buying an old book for $5 and destructively scanning it for $25 is way cheaper than paying extortion fees to the copyright-mongers. What I don't buy is it being "rare, precious books". First, they're not after ancient texts - they're after t…

Buying up old books is legal. Digitizing and distilling them arguably is too. And also: > paying extortion fees to the copyright-mongers Yes yes, greedy fat cat publishing oligarchs treading on the poor put-upon scrappy AI underdogs. /s Back in reality, the fraction of people who got into publishing books to get rich collecting rents is… not large. There’s so many other fields that are likely to reward participants w…

> Yes yes, greedy fat cat publishing oligarchs treading on the poor put-upon scrappy AI underdogs. /s

The fact that the copyright-mongers are oppressing someone you don't like this time should probably not change your opinion of them.

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#540

Post by nomel »

voakbasda wrote: post #536
nomel wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Our “rights to read” are diminished significantly with digital works as compared to printed works. I see it as opposite. I can hand someone the complete contents of a public library on a thumb drive. Delivering that to their door is going to be much trickier. Reading and distribution (pirate like) has been made MUCH easier, with non-physical distribution. I'm always carrying a 1" thick book in my pocket, that I can…

That’s fine as long as you acknowledge that you are breaking the law and infringing the rights of all of the authors of said works who do not want their works disseminated in that way. If you are willing to give a middle finger to the law, sure, the world is your oyster.

I was speaking to access and ease of sharing, enabling our ability to read, that digital has allowed, not my personal habits. Piracy was not the point of my comment. There are tools to remove DRM from digital purchases, and there are legit stores with DRM free files. And, there's always the option of buying a hard copy then downloading a scanned version (or doing it yourself).
Post reply on HN