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AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books

heraldscotland.com

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Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books

#31

Post by pbhjpbhj »

beering wrote: post #16
Terr_ wrote: post #2

At 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.

They broke copyright law. Too big to care, it something.

Some legislation got pushed through in some jurisdictions to allow them to claim things were "orphaned works".

Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books

#33

Post by qsera »

pfdietz wrote: post #15

If books were precious physical objects of great value, why is that not reflected in their prices? Used books are usually worthless. And if their inherent value was so great, regardless of supply or use, wouldn't we be able to churn out infinite value by just printing enormous nunbers of copies and storing them? This absurd consequence shows the outrage here is without rational foundation. It's feelings run amok. Fee…

>why is that not reflected in their prices?

Because the consumers are stupid and think being "new" is worth a lot more, for some reason, when it comes to art/literature/movies. So they are willing to pay more for new stuff that could be mediocre.

I would really pay 10 times the price of some old books, but consumer demand is nearly zero because they are old, so they have gone out of print...

Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books

#35

Post by Terr_ »

john_strinlai wrote: post #25
Catloafdev wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> i am saying that there are options to _intentionally_ be non-destructive.

Yes, techniques exist, but they are not "reasonable" here, because for these books the risk/penalties of copyright law require them to be destroyed after the scan anyway.

The non-destructive scanning (if you follow the ArsTechnica links) was done for different books with a different legal situation so that they could be preserved.

Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books

#36

Post by dilyevsky »

beering wrote: post #16
Terr_ wrote: post #2

At 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.

yes it's true, us court has ruled destructive scanning is required to make it "fair use" (ianal, etc etc) - https://www.ropesgray.com/en/insights/alerts/2025/06/from-bo...

Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books

#37

Post by tgv »

pfdietz wrote: post #15

If books were precious physical objects of great value, why is that not reflected in their prices? Used books are usually worthless. And if their inherent value was so great, regardless of supply or use, wouldn't we be able to churn out infinite value by just printing enormous nunbers of copies and storing them? This absurd consequence shows the outrage here is without rational foundation. It's feelings run amok. Fee…

If air is so valuable to you, why don't you pay premium for it? Not that it's comparable to books, but it has the same presupposition as your question.

Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books

#38

Post by Catloafdev »

john_strinlai wrote: post #25
Catloafdev wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The problem is the 'options to be intentionally non-destructive' come with legal liabilities that don't exist if they destroy the original copy.

Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books

#39

Post by pbhjpbhj »

vitorfblima wrote: post #27
beering wrote: post #16

Earlier 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.

It's very dependent on jurisdiction (and if you're rich, or a big company).

In UK there's no non-commercial use exception at all.

In USA it can fall under Fair Use, commercial nature is not the sole measure though.

Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books

#40

Post by basisword »

Catloafdev wrote: post #20
john_strinlai wrote: post #10

https://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.

They do have the option to not destroy the books. Their hand isn’t being forced. You can choose not to be scumbags just as you can choose to use a legal loophole to rip off writers, destroy books needlessly and resell their content through your service.
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