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AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books

heraldscotland.com

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Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books

#61

Post by pfdietz »

michaelmrose wrote: post #53
pfdietz wrote: post #15

If books were precious physical objects of great value, why is that not reflected in their prices? Used books are usually worthless. And if their inherent value was so great, regardless of supply or use, wouldn't we be able to churn out infinite value by just printing enormous nunbers of copies and storing them? This absurd consequence shows the outrage here is without rational foundation. It's feelings run amok. Fee…

If we value things according to their monetary value we must conclude that Elon musk is more valuable than every teacher in Americas labor for the next decade. Economic value is oft divorced entirely from any notion of real value. What you are describing derisively as "feels" is actually nuance the very essence of intelligence is not reducing complexity to tapioca. Destroying the last copy of a rare book reduces the…

Equating people to inanimate objects is a remarkable argument. How about we reject that out of hand.

Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books

#62

Post by dekhn »

pixl97 wrote: post #22
dekhn wrote: post #7

This is one of those articles that goes out of its way to enrage people, when the underlying reality is far simpler, more straightforward, and less nefarious.

I like how you get downvoted by the AI haters for a logical take.

I do too. But my hope is that by calmly repeating the truth the AI haters might realize that they are being manipulated.

Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books

#63

Post by tpoacher »

Legend2440 wrote: post #58
qsera wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they're probably quite common titles. Old books could have been common back in their day, but they might not be very common today.

The books you will find on a bulk sale are, by definition, the ones that are very common today.

Read it again. These aren't books that were bought in bulk bt bookstores.

They're rare books that are bought in bulk for scanning.

The analogy is imagine someone buying near-extinct animals from any source in bulk, not kittens from average pet shops.

Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books

#64

Post by Legend2440 »

tpoacher wrote: post #63
Legend2440 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The books you will find on a bulk sale are, by definition, the ones that are very common today.

Read it again. These aren't books that were bought in bulk bt bookstores. They're rare books that are bought in bulk for scanning. The analogy is imagine someone buying near-extinct animals from any source in bulk, not kittens from average pet shops.

>They're rare books that are bought in bulk for scanning.

Nope! Actually this article has a list of the books they were scanning:

https://fortune.com/2026/07/31/dutch-bookseller-ai-spam-phis...

>provided Fortune with the email and subsequent spreadsheet containing 3,001 titles, mostly published between 2020 and 2021 by academic publishers like Emerald Publishing, Elsevier, Wiley, Routledge and Oxford University Press, and ranging from business and education to engineering, public policy and medicine.

So not rare, mostly recent textbooks. The headline of this article is a lie designed to outrage you.

Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books

#65

Post by gmuslera »

qsera wrote: post #47
Legend2440 wrote: post #4

Who says they're rare and nonrecoverable? If they're bought in bulk from used booksellers, they're probably quite common titles. We throw away nearly a billion books every year. They're not sacred, and scanning a few million isn't a tragedy. People just don't like AI and want to be outraged about it.

>they're probably quite common titles. Old books could have been common back in their day, but they might not be very common today.

That means that they were already getting destroyed somewhat and not being recoverable, even without AIs. If there is just one or very few copies of a book or it ends in a particular buyer, or in warehouse prone to fires, not surviving to floods, rats or whatever.

Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books

#66

Post by qarl2 »

Retr0id wrote: post #8
qarl2 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And... at the very most... each AI company destroys ONE copy of a book.

Good thing there are hardly any AI companies these days.

I know! This must have lead to the destruction of AT LEAST 10 copies of the Twilight books.

OH THE HUMANITY!!!

Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books

#67

Post by dekhn »

tpoacher wrote: post #63
Legend2440 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The books you will find on a bulk sale are, by definition, the ones that are very common today.

Read it again. These aren't books that were bought in bulk bt bookstores. They're rare books that are bought in bulk for scanning. The analogy is imagine someone buying near-extinct animals from any source in bulk, not kittens from average pet shops.

These articles are designed to create maximal outrage, and they can mislead you into thinking the problem is far worse than it really is. Conflating the nature of the books (between "rare" and "common") is exactly the sort of things these articles do.

Also, the companies are required to do this by the government/law, they are not doing this because they want to destroy old knowledge. They are making that knowledge more widely available in a digital form.

Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books

#68

Post by bighi »

Legend2440 wrote: post #44
tgv wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If air is so valuable to you, why don't you pay premium for it? Not that it's comparable to books, but it has the same presupposition as your question.

Because air is extremely common and not scarce. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_value Similarly, wholesale used books are cheap because they are extremely common and not scarce.

This was a very nonsensical response. It's not analogous to the argument being made, nor it add any value to the conversation.

Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books

#69

Post by bighi »

qsera wrote: post #33
pfdietz wrote: post #15

If books were precious physical objects of great value, why is that not reflected in their prices? Used books are usually worthless. And if their inherent value was so great, regardless of supply or use, wouldn't we be able to churn out infinite value by just printing enormous nunbers of copies and storing them? This absurd consequence shows the outrage here is without rational foundation. It's feelings run amok. Fee…

>why is that not reflected in their prices? Because the consumers are stupid and think being "new" is worth a lot more, for some reason, when it comes to art/literature/movies. So they are willing to pay more for new stuff that could be mediocre. I would really pay 10 times the price of some old books, but consumer demand is nearly zero because they are old, so they have gone out of print...

These books ARE new. New-ish.

They are all books from 2020 and 2021.

Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books

#70

Post by bighi »

dilyevsky wrote: post #36
beering wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that true? I don’t remember Google Books destroying scanned books and they scanned a ton of books.

yes it's true, us court has ruled destructive scanning is required to make it "fair use" (ianal, etc etc) - https://www.ropesgray.com/en/insights/alerts/2025/06/from-bo...

Are these books being destroyed in the US?
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