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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

#421

Post by p-e-w »

dataflow wrote: post #369
pshirshov wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read more about this. Depends on the definition of the "big deal" but from what I can understand the problem is that they buy rare things - which exist in just several copies - and they tend to buy _all_ copies.

Where did you see they tend to buy all the copies? This comment is the first time I've heard of this.

It’s just another lie of the type these threads tend to be filled with nowadays.

Of course they aren’t buying “all copies”, and that wouldn’t even be possible in most cases since such books are usually flea market/attic material and most copies aren’t for sale (or even catalogued) to begin with.

I’d be interested to learn who comes up with such lies though. Is it really just random people venting their frustration, or some kind of organized astroturfing operation?

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

#422

Post by brookst »

akk0 wrote: post #411

I imagine they are only buying one copy of each book, thus only significantly affecting the supply of books that were already unfathomably rare. That may still be bad, but doesn't really support the "scan every book you can get your hands on before they are gone" narrative. That doesn't mean I'm against that narrative; I'm a big supporter of shadow libraries and scanning every unscanned book. But connecting to the LL…

The dissonance when a cause you support is loudly represented by disingenuous types.

At some point they’ll hit on data center water consumption as yet another reason to support the cause.

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

#423

Post by archonis »

shrubble wrote: post #349

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...

PR only cares that the company is percieved as unstoppable & inevitable.

If their PR teams did have a response to these actions, it would be something to the effect of:

"would you rather china destroy all the books and gatekeep the knowledge?"

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

#424

Post by danparsonson »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #394

Again, rare and valuable are not the same thing. A $2 bill is not as valuable as you think it is, unless you think it is $2.

Value is entirely in the eye of the beholder - money itself only has value because enough of us agree that it does.

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

#425

Post by noosphr »

shiandow wrote: post #376
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…

Good point, why waste time deciphering old badly burnt scrolls when anything worthwhile should have been preserved.

If the Romans had the printing press we'd have a lot more of those scrolls.

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

#426

Post by himinlomax »

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…

They're not destroying rare manuscripts or incunables.

They're destroying one (1) copy of a mass-produced item for each AI company.

Public libraries destroy millions more yearly as a matter of routine.

This is just part of a CCP-aligned moral panic, along with the water use nonsense, and similar with the soviet-aligned moral panic that destroyed the civil nuclear industry 40 years ago.

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

#427

Post by dbspin »

akk0 wrote: post #411

I imagine they are only buying one copy of each book, thus only significantly affecting the supply of books that were already unfathomably rare. That may still be bad, but doesn't really support the "scan every book you can get your hands on before they are gone" narrative. That doesn't mean I'm against that narrative; I'm a big supporter of shadow libraries and scanning every unscanned book. But connecting to the LL…

Doubtful. A robust protocol would be to scan several of each edition (to ensure no scanning errors), and scan each edition. Then too, these books are being purchased in lots with accidental duplicates, and all the major labs are doing it. So we're likely talking about tens of each book. For rare books - anything over a couple of hundred years old or small print runs either, that could well be most or even all copies. This wouldn't be immediately noticed either, especially if the books aren't currently considered noteworthy or well known.

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

#428

Post by Mudbugs »

hypendev wrote: post #367
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 a historical precedent standpoint, this is akin to the burning of the library of Alexandria, where centuries of knowledge was destroyed and leaving a limited version of the history, the surviving one, and depriving successive generations of significant amount of latent knowledge. How tho? Ever sunday at the flea market, I see thousands of books that are rotting, hoping for someone to buy them or at least take t…

Yep, this feels pretty much it. Looking at the "rare books", it was books that nobody would care about or would just rot away anyway. (The example book of Old books of agriculture is probably not that important today)

Liberians have to accept that much of their job is sending books to be burned. A lot of them try their best to get people to be interested in older books, but they have to make way for "newer" books instead.

The article is written in the same way as how dogs are getting murdered in the dog shelter, even if "everyone" agrees it is wrong, yet nobody adopts them.

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

#430

Post by archonis »

starkd wrote: post #407

How is Anna's Archive getting around the copyright violations of hosting all these books for access to all? I suspect it won't be long before they get sued and are forced to shut down. I spent some time reading the web site, and it doesn't look to be a well thought out project. Even the way it is organized leaved much to be desired. There's much more to library science and the organization of a vast collection of boo…

Anna's Archive merely indexes copyrighted content. It doesn't host.
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