Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A 'bananas' order for 5000 obscure book titles fuels suspicion

irishtimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 76 posts

Re: A 'bananas' order for 5000 obscure book titles fuels suspicion

#31

Post by phoghed »

abanana wrote: post #27
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #4

This is a good thing to a point, right? They sell heaps of stock, some old / outdated stock (like "Pass Your Driving Test, 2018 Edition" as per the article), in bulk, at full price, no questions asked. Retailer's dreams come true. (I don't believe them being digitized for consumption by AI will impact book sales much, as ebooks, google books, project gutenberg, etc didn't either)

It's great for the retailer, although I think that example was picked out because it's an extreme example of a book that'll never sell. But the volume of these orders shows another way the AI companies are pissing away their investors' money.

Download content to train? Immoral and illegal.

Buy it? You’re wasting investor money.

Re: A 'bananas' order for 5000 obscure book titles fuels suspicion

#32

Post by criddell »

When I hear these stories of AI companies buying all the books, I think back to Kevin Kelly in 2008 or 2009. He talked about how books are less expensive than at any other time in history and easier to buy and that could change so it makes sense to buy a lot of books.

> [...] I was near to the point of actually digitizing and getting rid of all my paper books.

> I was that close about five years ago, but then I had an epiphany. I went to private library, and I realized that books were never as cheap as they are today. They never will be as cheap, and that there's some power about having these things in paper always available, no batteries, never obsolete, and that if you made a library now, you would never be able to make some of these libraries in 50 years, so I decided to keep and to cultivate this paper library as something that was going to be powerful in the future.

I remember seeing photos of his library but can't find them anymore. This is the only thing I could find:

https://colossus.com/article/flounder-mode/

Re: A 'bananas' order for 5000 obscure book titles fuels suspicion

#33

Post by troupo »

vintermann wrote: post #7

> with a focus only on books with an ISBN number, the identification system introduced in 1966 So it's not likely to be rare and precious books. It's things which are already in the Library of Congress or its many equivalents. If they're forced by laws to destroy the results of the scans after training on them, as some have implied, that's bad, on the chance there is some actual lost media in there. But if they keep…

> on the chance there is some actual lost media in there. But if they keep the scans, or even the transcripts, that's probably an improvement on the status quo

Where can I see the scans and the transcripts in this "better status quo"?

Re: A 'bananas' order for 5000 obscure book titles fuels suspicion

#34

Post by ZenDroid »

paweladamczuk wrote: post #21

> “Under German law scanning books – regardless of the purpose – would not be permissible and constitute a clear violation of copyright law,” Excuse me, what?

https://law.stackexchange.com/a/93882

"Individual reproductions of a work by a natural person for private use on any medium are permitted, provided they are not used directly or indirectly for commercial purposes …"

Re: A 'bananas' order for 5000 obscure book titles fuels suspicion

#35

Post by sobiolite »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #14
femto wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as the AI devouring a book isn't making it harder for a person to get access to a copy of the book. There might not be many copies of some out-of-print books.

Would be nice to at least force them to open their scanned books data, after all they stole everything else, they can contribute some back

"Open" it how, exactly? Make it available for free? As in violate copyright?

Re: A 'bananas' order for 5000 obscure book titles fuels suspicion

#36

Post by sixtyj »

vintermann wrote: post #7

> with a focus only on books with an ISBN number, the identification system introduced in 1966 So it's not likely to be rare and precious books. It's things which are already in the Library of Congress or its many equivalents. If they're forced by laws to destroy the results of the scans after training on them, as some have implied, that's bad, on the chance there is some actual lost media in there. But if they keep…

SBN started in 1967 in UK (W.H.Smith), official international book numbering (ISBN) is after 1970.

Source: https://www.isbn.org/ISBN_history

Re: A 'bananas' order for 5000 obscure book titles fuels suspicion

#37

Post by wasmitnetzen »

paweladamczuk wrote: post #21

> “Under German law scanning books – regardless of the purpose – would not be permissible and constitute a clear violation of copyright law,” Excuse me, what?

German copyright law has no Fair Use. There are copyright exemptions for private or academic use, but commercial use has no such exemption. Books have special protection even according to § 53 (4) b).

And yes, it's the duplication which is illegal, not the publication of them.

[1]: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/urhg/__53.html

Re: A 'bananas' order for 5000 obscure book titles fuels suspicion

#38

Post by breezybottom »

criddell wrote: post #32

When I hear these stories of AI companies buying all the books, I think back to Kevin Kelly in 2008 or 2009. He talked about how books are less expensive than at any other time in history and easier to buy and that could change so it makes sense to buy a lot of books. > [...] I was near to the point of actually digitizing and getting rid of all my paper books. > I was that close about five years ago, but then I had a…

[flagged]

Re: A 'bananas' order for 5000 obscure book titles fuels suspicion

#39

Post by carlosjobim »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #16
luxuryballs wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking the inverse the psychosis is that someone who sells books is alerted that they are selling more books, as if someone buying books needs to give an explanation. If I want to seed software with books why is that newsworthy? Print more books, maintain profitable margins on books, enjoy success as a book seller? If a book is rare and you wanted to preserve it don't sell it so easily, increase the price, or…

Till it hits books that are out of print, we already had news about AI scourge companies destroying rare books coz scanning them in destructive ways was slightly cheaper. And as is happens in history, any time some entity mass destroys the books, they turn out to be bad guys

Your local school throws away books by the dumpster load once a year or every other year.

Re: A 'bananas' order for 5000 obscure book titles fuels suspicion

#40

Post by vintermann »

troupo wrote: post #33
vintermann wrote: post #7

> with a focus only on books with an ISBN number, the identification system introduced in 1966 So it's not likely to be rare and precious books. It's things which are already in the Library of Congress or its many equivalents. If they're forced by laws to destroy the results of the scans after training on them, as some have implied, that's bad, on the chance there is some actual lost media in there. But if they keep…

> on the chance there is some actual lost media in there. But if they keep the scans, or even the transcripts, that's probably an improvement on the status quo Where can I see the scans and the transcripts in this "better status quo"?

It's not enough of an improvement that you might see them. It's enough of an improvement that they will likely still exist somewhere.
Post reply on HN