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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

#341

Post by JohnFen »

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…

> I could destroy the books I buy myself if I wanted, they're my books and I can do whatever I want with them.

Of course you can. Nobody is saying these companies aren't allowed to do what they're doing.

But what they're doing is disgusting and something I can't forgive. It's an escalation of the attacks against society that these companies have been engaging in from the beginning. This isn't about legality, this is about what's right.

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

#342

Post by flatline »

mbeavitt wrote: post #307
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.

They cannot scan the books then resell them or donate them under current US copyright law. It’s not clear to me that they could warehouse them if they wanted. In the recent Bartz v Anthropic case the judge ruled this destruction as legal, saying

> The print original was destroyed. One replaced the other.

So that there was still only one “copy” of the book. This is in compliance with the DMCA. You can make a personal digital copy of a work but then you cannot resell the hard copy and keep the digital one. Same principle applies here.

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

#343

Post by cladopa »

It is not a big deal. Since the invention of the printing press any important book has been duplicated by thousands, tens of thousands or even million of units.

Just taking one of those and "destroying them"(it is not destroyed, a digital copy with the ability of doing millions of copies is stored somewhere) is not problematic for Humanity.

By the way, I always search for second hand books. Most of the books there are garbage. Most people clean their shelves with the books they don't care about, but preserve the ones that are good. If they are young people that inherited a house and don't care about books, they pick and sell the good ones, giving away the bad books.

If you go to a recycling centre, the garbage to quality ratio is over 100 or more. That is, for every 100 books that are garbage there is one good quality book. It is very rare to find a jewel there.

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

#344

Post by psma_egeliaa »

silverwind wrote: post #338
mbeavitt wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

More importantly: Once Anthropic is gone, all knowlege is lost.

It will probably be actioned off in the bankruptcy proceedings.

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

#345

Post by voidhorse »

Filligree wrote: post #316
voidhorse wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, which is completely fine. There's a major difference between: A. Company destroys a book forever for training. Its scan is locked away forever in company records. In this case: - This information is locked away in the improvisations of an LLM. It is no longer possible to directly access the information as written by the human being that authored it. This constitutes the loss of literary history, or at least los…

B is illegal, and Anthropic ate a billion dollar fine for trying it, so you can’t even claim they don’t want to.

Then give up training on antiquated books. Why does an LLM aimed at providing utility for people living in 2026 need to be trained on rare (thus probably obscure) texts of yore in the first place?

Because these companies have no real strategy beyond trying to capture any and all information they possibly can to try and lock it away and charge the public for it in perpetuity.

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

#346

Post by raptor99 »

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…

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but you really do have to assume the worst about any of these "AI" companies, especially the large ones like ChatGPT and Anthropic.

They literally lie, cheat and steal at any opportunity they have and in any way that they think of. Do not trust a single thing that they say; it is a fool's folly to do so.

A lot of this can already be said about a lot of companies, especially almost any large company, but it goes doubly if not triply so for this new breed of company now.

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

#347

Post by ainiriand »

CamelCaseName wrote: post #319

You ask "Why destroy physical books?" I ask "Why save physical books?" If they are truly rare, then they are likely not valuable, otherwise there would be more copies or their contents could be found elsewhere. Owning and storing physical books is not free, there is a real cost. Even owning and storing the scans is not free, especially when IP rights and challenges get involved, since a scanned book with no distribut…

That's what state libraries are for, although I understand that sometimes is hard to wrap around the concept of using public money for something different than producing money.

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

#348

Post by tele_ski »

CamelCaseName wrote: post #319

You ask "Why destroy physical books?" I ask "Why save physical books?" If they are truly rare, then they are likely not valuable, otherwise there would be more copies or their contents could be found elsewhere. Owning and storing physical books is not free, there is a real cost. Even owning and storing the scans is not free, especially when IP rights and challenges get involved, since a scanned book with no distribut…

So these books are not worth anything because they have so few copies but they are still worth including in only their models? Seems a bit contradictory

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

#349

Post by shrubble »

AI companies could certainly release the scans of any book that is no longer covered by copyright in the USA, for free download and get some positive publicity for a change.

I do wonder who is running PR at the major AI companies, as they seem rather insensate to how they are perceived...

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

#350

Post by SkyBelow »

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…

>Despite the copyright restrictions that are forcing companies to do this, they should maintain archives that are publicly available.

Aren't the copyright laws forcing them to do this the very ones that would make such archives illegal? The books that could be in such an archive are the books that don't need to be destroyed.

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