AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books
21–30 of 88 posts
Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books
#22This 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.
I like how you get downvoted by the AI haters for a logical take.
Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books
#23Personally, 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.
They destroyed it, there's nowhere to buy it or read it for the public?
Not sure if that was a whoosh?
£5 .. don't think it's destroyed .. https://www.abebooks.co.uk/Learning-Python-Mark-Lutz-OReilly...
Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books
#24https://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.
The scanning process they use is _intentionally_ destructive, not accidentally destructive. It's not because they hate books or something. It's literally to stay in the law due to the legal rulings surrounding AI companies and copyright. If they had the option of not destroying the books without any risk of further lawsuit, they would. They aren't like some crazy people that just want to destroy books.
Cutting off the binding of the book to separate the pages makes them easier to scan, that's part of the reason why they do it destructively.
Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books
#25https://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.
The scanning process they use is _intentionally_ destructive, not accidentally destructive. It's not because they hate books or something. It's literally to stay in the law due to the legal rulings surrounding AI companies and copyright. If they had the option of not destroying the books without any risk of further lawsuit, they would. They aren't like some crazy people that just want to destroy books.
>The scanning process they use is _intentionally_ destructive, not accidentally destructive.
i am aware. i am saying that there are options to _intentionally_ be non-destructive.
>They aren't like some crazy people that just want to destroy books.
i didnt say or imply they were
Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books
#26At 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 co…
Is that true? I don’t remember Google Books destroying scanned books and they scanned a ton of books.
Follow up: I can’t seem to find any ruling that says you need to destroy the scanned book. Destroying the book might bolster your case in a copyright lawsuit, but the law does not require it afaict. I doubt you would lose a lawsuit simply because you put the book in a locked warehouse after scanning it.
Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books
#27At 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 co…
Is that true? I don’t remember Google Books destroying scanned books and they scanned a ton of books.
IANAL, but I think you are allowed to copy work for non-commercial use.
Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books
#28At 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 co…
Even without copyright isssues Google would have been perfectly fine in destructively scanning these books.
Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, if they're bought in bulk, there's gonna be some duplicates. They probably don't know what they're buying until they start scanning. But still, the number of duplicates will be inversely proportational to the rarity of the book. Lots of copies of James Patterson and Twilight, probably few or zero rare 16th-century manuscripts.
I would assume the very first step would be cataloging the author, title, and revision of the book so hundreds of thousands of hours of time are not wasted scanning duplicates.
They probably still throw away the duplicates even if they don't scan them, because the wholesale value of a used paperback of the Da Vinci Code is like half a cent.
Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is that true? I don’t remember Google Books destroying scanned books and they scanned a ton of books.
IANAL, but I think you are allowed to copy work for non-commercial use.
I don't think so. I believe teachers (for example) have gotten in trouble over this.