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AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

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Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

#71

Post by runarberg »

tptacek wrote: post #52
runarberg wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To not destroy rare books.

When you read "rare books", what are you thinking these are? The 404 article that spun this story up goes into more detail. These are like vanity press books. They're rare because nobody cares about them. The book industry already destroys these books .

I am thinking about a long essay Icelandic author Þórbergur Þórðarson wrote to his pals abroad, and were left abroad. I am thinking about a photo book by an Indonesian naturalist who is famous on Bali, and took amazing photos of wildlife on Sulawesi in 1926, and colored in, and somehow ended up in New Jersey in the 1980s. I am thinking about a collection of essays written by a teenage J.D. Salinger who he left unsigned at a café thinking nobody would want to read them but just leaving it up to chance. Or maybe a Jackson Pollock sketchbook he lost at a party which ended in the host’s bookshelf, and finally at an estate sale.

Plenty of such unknown unknown exist, and the AI machine will inevitably destroy a bunch of them at this scale.

Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

#72

Post by 0x0000F8_ »

Cider9986 wrote: post #35

The AI companies should work with the Internet Archive to release the digitized copies once the copyright expires. Unrelated: So with this one copy BS are you not allowed to have backups of the data?

I entirely believe the litigation brought against Internet Archive was secretly sponsored by these exact organizations, because they want to monopolize information to train models.

No data => No models => No competition.

Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

#73

Post by partiallypro »

The hysteria around AI and data centers has hit a precipice. It's actually a bit embarrassing now. I am pretty sure there are foreign adversaries that are trying to stop the US, but I also really blame the AI companies for doing the most horrendous job imaginable in pitching AI to the public. Not a shock that people are against something that tech bros have claimed will destroy everyone's lives in the next 5 years. These books were probably going into a landfill without AI companies getting them, regardless. Tons and tons of books go into the garbage every day.

Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

#74

Post by rackp »

altcognito wrote: post #66

What evidence do we have that they are "destroying" books? I'm not saying this in their defense, but as someone who has worked at companies who has scanned books at scale, and generally speaking, I wasn't on site there, but I knew we/they were pretty delicate with the books. And while the kneejerk reaction might be "hey, why would they go through the effort?" -- my guess is that they are following or even hiring peop…

[dead]

Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

#75

Post by altcognito »

shakna wrote: post #13

I wholeheartedly believe the AI controversy on destroying books is being stirred up by the companies themselves. Copyright law requires you destroy a book, if you format shift it. If you digitise, you need to ensure its not a "copy" but that your one license went with the book. So... If enough people complain, they get to pressure for copyright changes. Which will just so happen to have massive carveouts to let them…

"You own a particular physical copy; you don't possess an abstract transferable 'one-copy license."

There is nothing that says you have to destroy something because you scanned it. This argument has been confusing me since I've seen this pop up.

Edit; despite the above, looking at the court documents from the Anthropic case, this is pretty close to what they were arguing: “we are just transferring the physical form we purchased, therefore it is legal.”

I still dont think there is a requirement to destroy the book, but since there isn’t a reason to store the book and they can’t sell it, they probably just took the cheapest route. It might be worth an argument that they only purchased the right to use the digital copies while the physical copies exist, but I’m in over my head from a copyright standpint

Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

#76

Post by tptacek »

alightsoul wrote: post #33
RajT88 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The articles I've read on this are not clear, but I strongly suspect "rare" is not the definition you and I probably use for the level of rarity of books actually being destroyed. These are not going to be the kinds of books "The Ninth Gate" resolved around - truly one of a kind. It's not good they are destroying books, but they are books which do have other copies. Just perhaps not many.

There's just a few copies in a single library worldwide which is probably a national or a university library

The 404 story suggested that these are largely vanity press books and instruction manuals for things no longer sold. Implying that these books were almost certainly headed for the recycling center had the AI companies not snatched them up.

Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

#77

Post by tptacek »

card_zero wrote: post #69
enraged_camel wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, a lot of these "rare books" are stuff like TV programming magazines from October 1994.

So, have you tried finding out what the programming was in October 1994? Or what cultural ephemera appeared in the TV guides of that era alongside the schedules? Either there's a copy for the week you want in an archive, or somebody's got one for sale, or most often neither. This can piss you off, if as it happened you had a reason to care.

That would make sense as an argument if the natural endpoint of these copies was preservation, and AI was disrupting that. But the natural next step for virtually all these books is to be recycled, not preserved. Books are generally not preserved. It is extremely normal for them to be pulped. Millions and millions of books are pulped every year.

Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

#78

Post by tptacek »

runarberg wrote: post #71
tptacek wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you read "rare books", what are you thinking these are? The 404 article that spun this story up goes into more detail. These are like vanity press books. They're rare because nobody cares about them. The book industry already destroys these books .

I am thinking about a long essay Icelandic author Þórbergur Þórðarson wrote to his pals abroad, and were left abroad. I am thinking about a photo book by an Indonesian naturalist who is famous on Bali, and took amazing photos of wildlife on Sulawesi in 1926, and colored in, and somehow ended up in New Jersey in the 1980s. I am thinking about a collection of essays written by a teenage J.D. Salinger who he left unsign…

You're trying to imagine rare valuable books and then fantasizing about AI companies destroying them, but what's actually happening here is that AI companies are acquiring, digitizing, and then pulping the instruction manuals to 1983-vintage copy machines.

This is all such a special-pleading argument. You know what other institution snatches up books and destroys them at huge scale? Public library systems. People clean out their attics and basements and drop off huge boxes full of books at libraries; libraries take the things they know will circulate, and destroy the rest. Take a guess as to how Þórbergur Þórðarson fares at the Newark Public Library. Wait, bad example, they stopped accepting book donations because nobody wants your old books. They tell you to give the books to thrift stores instead. Guess what the thrift stores do with them?

You know how many times I've read stories about the grave damage libraries are doing to human culture? Zero, zero times.

Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

#80

Post by bawolff »

alightsoul wrote: post #8
zmmmmm wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also the case that the copyright holders are often putting restrictions around use of electronic forms that are driving the desire to use physical copies. I doubt AI companies would use a single physical book if they could avoid it - absent the legal cloud over electronic rights. I have no evidence but I can't help suspecting in part the publicity around this is driven in part by rights holders that want to for…

Ai companies don't use ebooks, because they are more expensive than second hand books

i imagine its because the doctrine of first sale does not apply to ebooks.
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