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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

#671

Post by Levitz »

tptacek wrote: post #53
Levitz wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The outraged people don't care. They hate AI, and so anything surrounding AI that can be evil is evil. Books are good, AI destroys books, AI is bad. Furthermore, they like that AI is bad. Because they think it's bad, and being right feels good .

I think people genuinely don't get that book destruction is like a pretty natural part of the book lifecycle.

It doesn't matter if they get it, because they wouldn't care either way. They would just pivot to "but more are destroyed this way" or "but these have value or they wouldn't buy them" or some variant of it.

There is no logical train of thought. It's not about logic.

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

#672

Post by svachalek »

frm88 wrote: post #377
tptacek wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cle…

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. Source? You state that in a tone that implies you have verifiable knowlege of this. All the information I found says that the exact number, titles and authors are…

Given no information, would you assume companies that are buying "huge quantities" of "rare" books are getting first edition Jules Verne by the crate, or 1989 Highlights magazines recovered from dentist offices?

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

#673

Post by adamors »

juiceland wrote: post #576
letmetweakit wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to have a sample to be able to reprint it.

Good thing the books are being scanned, then. The copyright owners know just who to go to get the sample.

They’re not giving anybody any samples lol

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

#674

Post by ndiddy »

misnome wrote: post #655
p0w3n3d wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi Big companies will read up the books and make their AI recite them from memory, but Archive.org was sued for renting one book on an exclusive basis (unless one would return, another wouldn't be able to rent)

> Archive.org was sued for renting one book on an exclusive basis (unless one would return, another wouldn't be able to rent) No, this is what they were doing before, but they explicitly started lending out "unlimited" copies, which is why they got sued.

That's why they got sued, but the suit is mainly over whether controlled digital lending is legal at all rather than their "emergency library". Archive.org lost the case on summary judgment, meaning that they could not come up with a single fair use argument for CDL that the judge found compelling enough to let the case go to trial. The full judgment is here https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.53... but here's a couple excerpts:

> The crux of IA's first factor argument is that an organization has the right under fair use to make whatever copies of its print books are necessary to facilitate digital lending of that book, so long as only one patron at a time can borrow the book for each copy that has been bought and paid for. See Oral Arg. Tr. 31:10-15. But there is no such right, which risks eviscerating the rights of authors and publishers to profit from the creation and dissemination of derivatives of their protected works. See 17 U.S.C. §§ 106(1), (2). IA's wholesale copying and unauthorized lending of digital copies of the Publishers' print books does not transform the use of the books, and IA profits from exploiting the copyrighted material without paying the customary price. The first fair use factor strongly favors the Publishers.

> In this case, there is a "thriving ebook licensing market for libraries" in which the Publishers earn a fee whenever a library obtains one of their licensed ebooks from an aggregator like OverDrive. Pls.' 56.1 ¶¶ 577-578. This market generates at least tens of millions of dollars a year for the Publishers. Id. ¶¶ 170, 172. And IA supplants the Publishers' place in this market. IA offers users complete ebook editions of the Works in Suit without IA's having paid the Publishers a fee to license those ebooks, and it gives libraries an alternative to buying ebook licenses from the Publishers. Indeed, IA pitches the Open Libraries project to libraries in part as a way to help libraries avoid paying for licenses. See Pls.' 56.1 ¶ 383 (presentation IA gave to libraries asserting that pairing with IA means that "You Don't Have to Buy It Again!"); id. ¶ 382 (different presentation promising that the Open Libraries project "ensures that a library will not have to buy the same content over and over, simply because of a change in format"). IA thus "brings to the marketplace a competing substitute" for library ebook editions of the Works in Suit, "usurp[ing] a market that properly belongs to the copyright-holder."

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

#675

Post by allturtles »

misnome wrote: post #655
p0w3n3d wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi Big companies will read up the books and make their AI recite them from memory, but Archive.org was sued for renting one book on an exclusive basis (unless one would return, another wouldn't be able to rent)

> Archive.org was sued for renting one book on an exclusive basis (unless one would return, another wouldn't be able to rent) No, this is what they were doing before, but they explicitly started lending out "unlimited" copies, which is why they got sued.

There is so much misinformation/confusion about this... they go sued after lending "unlimited" copies, but they were sued (and lost) for lending exclusive copies (controlled digital lending):

> “At bottom, [the Internet Archive’s] fair use defense rests on the notion that lawfully acquiring a copyrighted print book entitles the recipient to make an unauthorized copy and distribute it in place of the print book, so long as it does not simultaneously lend the print book,” Judge John G. Koeltl of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan wrote. “But no case or legal principle supports that notion. Every authority points the other direction.” [0]

[0]: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-innovation/teaching...

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

#676

Post by shagie »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #629
thread_id wrote: post #494

I don't see any mention of Project Ocean - AKA Google books. Before AI they endevoured to digitize books in a massive online library. This inccluded rare and out of print books many which are archived at libraries. Because they had to preserve the books and return them in the condition they received then they created elaborate technology to accomplish this. The project was met with significant legal challenges from a…

Internet Archive version: https://openlibrary.org/ Info on where to send books not yet in their collection: https://help.archive.org/help/how-do-i-make-a-physical-donat... Mobile apps to determine if they need a book: https://help.archive.org/help/donate-books-app-for-ios-and-a... Web app: https://archive.org/want/?mode=donation_book For example, I donated a copy of Systems Bible (out of print, hard to find imho) and…

As an aside... https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Systems_Bible/mrOsb... (and I haven't hit any "you can't read this" limits yet).

While the hard copy is a bit pricy for my shelf of curious books, it's also available on kindle. https://www.amazon.com/SYSTEMANTICS-SYSTEMS-BIBLE-John-Gall-...

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

#677

Post by juiceland »

adamors wrote: post #673
juiceland wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good thing the books are being scanned, then. The copyright owners know just who to go to get the sample.

They’re not giving anybody any samples lol

Has anyone asked? From the discussion here it seems like the books are extremely valuable.

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

#678

Post by 1234letshaveatw »

smallerize wrote: post #539
Mudbugs wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ins…

Well if you're appealing to librarians: "Hey, guys, when the librarians get pissed about the destruction of books, it’s time to put those listening ears on. Because we are very comfortable with the idea that books are tools that can be retired. What’s happening right now is not that...." https://bsky.app/profile/annabookwriter.bsky.social/post/3mt...

I'm not a bsky person so I didn't click though but library books aren't "retired" to a farm upstate. My SO works at a library, they are mostly shredded. This is a nothingburger

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

#680

Post by famouswaffles »

dbspin wrote: post #579
famouswaffles wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Hopefully you can infer how this tracks to the written world and primary sources for language, technical manuals etc etc. I honestly can't and I think you can't either or you would have used an example with books/printed media rather than film, an entirely different ballgame.

OK... I'm going to assume good faith even though your wording makes it somewhat unlikely. Similar textual examples would be any text containing actual language as it's spoken in a given place or time. Or any factual textbook detailing the buildings present in a given location. Or any text book detailing a now defunct construction process. Or any text book (generally small run) detailing a niche interest, now missing…

I think there are two issues here:

1. If someone is acquiring books in bulk for bargain-bin prices and shredding them, they're books whose physical copies have essentially no market value and which, absent this buyer, were overwhelmingly headed for pulping or landfill anyway. Millions of books are destroyed every day.

Could one of these worthless looking books turn out to contain information historians care about in a 100 year? Sure. But that doesn't create an obligation for someone to pay to warehouse every extant copy forever. Physical Preservation has costs: space, cataloguing, handling, transportation etc. Archives and libraries have always had to make choices for this reason.

2. I'm not arguing that preservation has no value. The question is whether destroying a physical copy after digitizing it is a serious loss when talking about mass-produced printed material.

Was this the last surviving copy ? Is the information unavavilable in libraries, archives, other editions, scans, citations, contemporary works etc ? If not, nothing has been lost except one physical instance of a reproducible object.

Your film analogy worked a lot better because old film footage is often unique primary source material. A camera recording of a random brooklyn street in 1993 may literally be the only recording of those people, storefronts and circumstances. The nth printe dcopy of a technical manual is not analogous to that.

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