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AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books

heraldscotland.com

71–80 of 88 posts

Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very dependent on jurisdiction (and if you're rich, or a big company). In UK there's no non-commercial use exception at all. In USA it can fall under Fair Use, commercial nature is not the sole measure though.

In my jurisdiction (Brazil) there is non-commercial use, but most people don't know about it.

You are mixing the concepts of fair use and non-commercial use.

Non-commercial use is not allowed in Brazil. But Brazil does have some fair use exceptions (like most countries that signed the international agreement on intellectual property).

In Brazil it's illegal for me to make copies of a book and distribute it for free on the streets, for example. It's 100% non-commercial, but still illegal.

Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books

#72
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.

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.

> 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.

There's a difference between accidental or negligent destruction, and planned and deliberate destruction.

You're describing the former, but these AI companies are doing the latter.

Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books

#73
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not. It's an excellent example that economic value!= value.

Your facile dodge isn't an argument and suggests you lack one.

Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books

#74
22 Jul 2026 14:52:41 UTC

AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They''re Free of AI Slop

https://www.404media.co/ai-companies-are-buying-tons-of-old-...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49007769

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25 Jul 2026 04:16:09 UTC

AI vendors are destroying rare books to feed the chatbot Pivot to AI

https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/07/23/ai-vendors-are-destroying...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49044469

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27 Jul 2026 08:09:08 UTC

AI companies are buying books and destroying them

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-companies-de...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49066514

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27 Jul 2026 12:32:12 UTC

AI companies are shredding rare books

https://xcancel.com/HedgieMarkets/status/17 Dec 2035 20:03:08 UTC485296565

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49068738

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27 Jul 2026 22:11:17 UTC

AI Companies Are Buying Antique Books, Ingesting Their Contents to Train Models

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-companies-de...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49076129

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27 Jul 2026 23:32:01 UTC

AI Companies Are Buying Antique Books and Destroying Them at Scale

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-companies-de...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49077029

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28 Jul 2026 05:04:45 UTC

Anthropic Knew Public Would Be Disgusted by How It Was Destroying Physical Books

https://futurism.com/future-society/anthropic-destroying-boo...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49079584

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28 Jul 2026 15:23:37 UTC

Is an AI company buying up all the used books? (I don''t think so, not this time)

https://charliebecker.substack.com/p/is-an-ai-company-buying...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49085321

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29 Jul 2026 10:52:51 UTC

AI companies buy, scan, shred rare and out-of-print books

https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/internet/ai-labs-b...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49095750

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29 Jul 2026 16:33:54 UTC

AI companies are reportedly shredding books after using them to train AI models

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49099668

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31 Jul 2026 11:00:37 UTC

AI Firms Are Buying Up Old Books, Then Scanning and Destroying Them

https://novaramedia.com/2026/07/29/ai-firms-are-buying-up-ol...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49121597

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31 Jul 2026 11:45:33 UTC

AI Companies Mass Shredding Rare Books [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c8pmp_OC2s

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49121930

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Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books

#76
post #59
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are cheap because they are old, and people are so stupid that they think if something is old, it should be worthless.

When your justification for your idea is that everyone else is stupid, maybe you need to reevaluate who is being stupid.

I didn't say everyone else is stupid. I said (or meant) consumers show largely/collectively stupid behavior that I described.

Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books

#77
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mo…

>They are making that knowledge more widely available in a digital form.

Where can I access the digital form of the destroyed books? You should know since you made this statement, right?

Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books

#78
post #77
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mo…

>They are making that knowledge more widely available in a digital form. Where can I access the digital form of the destroyed books? You should know since you made this statement, right?

Reread what he wrote

Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books

#79
post #59
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are cheap because they are old, and people are so stupid that they think if something is old, it should be worthless.

When your justification for your idea is that everyone else is stupid, maybe you need to reevaluate who is being stupid.

Or maybe just not. Galileo comes to mind.

Re: AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books

#80
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They are making that knowledge more widely available in a digital form. Where can I access the digital form of the destroyed books? You should know since you made this statement, right?

Reread what he wrote

Yea, and I don't think I missed something. To be clear, I don't want the "knowledge in the book", I want the content of the book itself so that I can form my own knowledge. So don't not want an LLMs regurgitation of the book...

And what about fiction? I don't want an LLM's "interpretation", I want the real thing.

Is that made available somewhere?

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