AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books
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AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books
1–10 of 88 posts
Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books
#2At least 80% of the anger here is misdirected, we should be blaming stupid copyright laws created over the last several decades by big-media lobbyists.
Even if the person running the scanner treated every book with utmost love, museum-level care, and holy sanctity... copyright law would still require them to shred/burn the pristine antique book at the end anyway, or else they get sued for bazillions by the modern companies that "own" the book's contents.
Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books
#3Personally, I end up throwing away a decent amount of books that the book donation people won't take. Especially old technical books. Textbooks from 2001. These headlines just don't tell me anything useful. "Rare" doesn't mean anything.
Please, give me one example of an interesting and unique book that the AI companies have destroyed.
Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books
#4Who says they're rare and nonrecoverable? If they're bought in bulk from used booksellers, they're probably quite common titles.
We throw away nearly a billion books every year. They're not sacred, and scanning a few million isn't a tragedy. People just don't like AI and want to be outraged about it.
Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books
#5Personally, I end up throwing away a decent amount of books that the book donation people won't take. Especially old technical books. Textbooks from 2001. These headlines just don't tell me anything useful. "Rare" doesn't mean anything. Please, give me one example of an interesting and unique book that the AI companies have destroyed.
Oreilley’s 1999 classic: Learning Python.
Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books
#6Who says they're rare and nonrecoverable? If they're bought in bulk from used booksellers, they're probably quite common titles. We throw away nearly a billion books every year. They're not sacred, and scanning a few million isn't a tragedy. People just don't like AI and want to be outraged about it.
And... at the very most... each AI company destroys ONE copy of a book.
Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books
#7This is one of those articles that goes out of its way to enrage people, when the underlying reality is far simpler, more straightforward, and less nefarious.
Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books
#8Who says they're rare and nonrecoverable? If they're bought in bulk from used booksellers, they're probably quite common titles. We throw away nearly a billion books every year. They're not sacred, and scanning a few million isn't a tragedy. People just don't like AI and want to be outraged about it.
And... at the very most... each AI company destroys ONE copy of a book.
Good thing there are hardly any AI companies these days.
Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books
#9[deleted]
Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books
#10https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/06/anthropic-destroyed-milli...
ars from a month ago is a bit less emotional about it:
"The court documents don’t indicate that any rare books were destroyed in this process—Anthropic purchased its books in bulk from major retailers"
but also brings up a reasonable point that there are good ways to do this type of scanning non-destructively.