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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

#301

Post by brainwad »

xandrius wrote: post #296
eulgro wrote: post #291

We've been seeing that headline for a few weeks now and I really don't understand the problem. Companies are paying for the books now, great! And destroying a book is really the best way to scan it. I could destroy the books I buy myself if I wanted, they're my books and I can do whatever I want with them. A book is really just a stack of paper, I don't get the sacred feeling attached to it. Especially since books ar…

The problem is that you probably do little research or read very few old books. There are multiple instances of a book being referred within another book, while at the time the author had access to it, we might not have it today. Taking a rare book and destroying absolutely erases that link we have with the past. You not seeing a problem with this is the core issue, it's probably why the people doing it (it's people…

Surely the people granted a legal monopoly to print the books will have kept a copy of the masters in order to reprint any lost works. Surely copyright works as intended for the public good and isn't just rent seeking. Surely.

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

#302

Post by embedding-shape »

ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #297

The main question is why aren't they leaking it to AA themselves? Trying to keep an edge with their training sets? Isn't it ridiculous, considering the sheer size of them and statistical insignificance of the set differences?

> The main question is why aren't they leaking it to AA themselves?

Why on earth would they? Ultimate point for these companies is to make a ton of money, obviously they won't shoot themselves in the foot and give away whatever advantage they have, especially not to a free archive which is about doing good in the world, which probably isn't profitable enough for a company to care about.

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

#303

Post by smalltorch »

ziyadb wrote: post #299

I was surprised to read that Anthropic (and probably other data / model companies) are doing this and it's extremely disappointing, as working towards the benefit of humanity is not an exclusive right / domain of theirs but rather, is a shared responsibility and mission carried by all of humanity itself as a collective responsibility. Thus, the preservation of this knowledge, its availability, and accessibility are t…

Surely they have the high quality scans, but there would probably be the same legal restrictions to just share the archive.

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

#304

Post by squidbeak »

eulgro wrote: post #291

We've been seeing that headline for a few weeks now and I really don't understand the problem. Companies are paying for the books now, great! And destroying a book is really the best way to scan it. I could destroy the books I buy myself if I wanted, they're my books and I can do whatever I want with them. A book is really just a stack of paper, I don't get the sacred feeling attached to it. Especially since books ar…

> A book is really just a stack of paper, I don't get the sacred feeling attached to it. Especially since books are printed in thousands to millions of identical copies.

If you've read the articles covering this issue, you'll be aware the concern is over the fate of rare and out of print books, rather than your straw man (ie those available in 'thousands to millions' of copies).

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp3rprx2wl4o

> "A recent academic text published in only 100 copies, 75 of which are already in libraries, may be very rare on the market - but it is perhaps not such a great loss if one copy is destroyed," says Derek Walker, owner of Edinburgh bookshop McNaughtan's.

> "But we have, and have sold, books which are for example the only known surviving example of an edition from the 18th century.

> "It would be a much more significant problem if one like that were to be bought for destruction, having survived this long."

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

#305

Post by brainwad »

embedding-shape wrote: post #298
brainwad wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's illegal. That's the whole reason they are shredding books in the first place, because copyright law forces them to do stupid things. Google wanted to share the whole of Google Books 15 years ago, too, but they were sued to hell, so now you get a watered down search functionality.

> because copyright law forces them to do stupid things This is such dangerous train of thought, to give them the benefit of being forced to destroy books. Why is that exactly, and who is forcing them? You can also, you know, find another way? Like the data centers who currently use very dirty energy acquisition methods (not all of them), are they also "forced" to do this, because they too need to make as much money…

It is a shit idea. But that's copyright law for you - if you want to digitise the work for yourself, you according to latest precedents have to destroy the copy you digitised ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯

I don't blame the companies for either wanting digitised works, nor following the law. I blame the absurd court ruling, and I blame the publishers for not having digitised the old works themselves, in which case they could just sell e-books to the labs... They are after all the only ones who can legally do it non-destructively.

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

#307

Post by mbeavitt »

ziyadb wrote: post #299

I was surprised to read that Anthropic (and probably other data / model companies) are doing this and it's extremely disappointing, as working towards the benefit of humanity is not an exclusive right / domain of theirs but rather, is a shared responsibility and mission carried by all of humanity itself as a collective responsibility. Thus, the preservation of this knowledge, its availability, and accessibility are t…

From their perspective, it's training data that their competitors don't have. If they make it available, they fill in their moat.

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

#308

Post by jeroenhd »

drtgh wrote: post #277
jeroenhd wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They want to have a digital copy and the judge ruled they can only keep one copy.

You do not need to shred books to scan them. This only happens if you don't care about preserving the integrity of the books and you want to scan more cheaply.

But their legal framework for being permitted to scan the books en masse (they are "transforming" the book from physical to digital) requires destruction of the original. Otherwise it wouldn't be transforming, it would be duplicating.

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

#310

Post by squidbeak »

joshstrange wrote: post #275
wesleywt wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are scanning "rare" books. I presume there are not a lot of copies left to throw out.

Rare by whose definition? I’m not aiming this at you directly by: ISBNs or STFU Show me which “rare” books they are destroying and _maybe_ I’ll care but so far the pearl-clutching over this leads me to believe it’s people worked up about the idea of destroying (except it’s not destroying, it’s transforming, a fact often ignored) books, books that it’s not clear at all there is any strong demand for. People want to in…

> Show me which “rare” books they are destroying and _maybe_ I’ll care but so far the pearl-clutching over this

BBC good enough for you?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp3rprx2wl4o

"A recent academic text published in only 100 copies, 75 of which are already in libraries, may be very rare on the market - but it is perhaps not such a great loss if one copy is destroyed," says Derek Walker, owner of Edinburgh bookshop McNaughtan's.

"But we have, and have sold, books which are for example the only known surviving example of an edition from the 18th century.

"It would be a much more significant problem if one like that were to be bought for destruction, having survived this long."

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