I'm sure the AI companies will retain scans of the books for training on newer models
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
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
The articles I've read on this are not clear, but I strongly suspect "rare" is not the definition you and I probably use for the level of rarity of books actually being destroyed. These are not going to be the kinds of books "The Ninth Gate" resolved around - truly one of a kind. It's not good they are destroying books, but they are books which do have other copies. Just perhaps not many.
Quite possibly not many, and no copy held in any form by the copyright owner either. Say a few hundred copies of some obscure book from 40 years ago. They probably won't be erased from the face of the earth by the judicious and proportionate actions of, of a few, AI companies? Hmm.
Is there a specific book from 40 years ago you have in mind? Asking out of curiosity.
Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
My personal wastebook at home is so rare, it's unique. That doesn't mean it needs preservation.
Like I said, at this scale, there are no guarantees for anything. Very likely will there be a unique copy of an invaluable book or letter an the person feeding it to the scanner will not know and the book get destroyed. Like did Icelandic author Þórbergur Þórðarson ever write an a book about Esperanto, and send the only copy of it to Halldór Laxness when he was in Los Angeles? I don‘t know, but it is certainly someth…
Well, at least afterwards the book is scanned and preserved digitally in their archives of training data.
If the book was just rotting away in some forgotten bookstore, it would more likely be unceremoniously disposed off in the future without anyone scanning it first.
Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late
#84I am baffled at these practices and somewhere confused on what's the end game here? monopoly on information? altering data? exclusive subscription based knowledge? Feels like we have welcomed the AI era with open hands hoping( at-least assuming) that data democracy will be there, yet feels like its a long road!
Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late
#85To clarify: Are they scanning and destroying a single copy of Book X or are they buying up all copies of book X, scanning it once, then destroying all copies of book X they can get their hand on?
Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late
#86This whole situation is such a disgusting consequence of copyright law. The most frustrating part is that its so artificial. It is 100% the consequence of stupid laws.
Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late
#87As much as I hate piracy in a sector in financial crisis like book publishing (because Anna’s project is piracy), I hate even more what these large AI companies are doing: privatizing human knowledge.
On one side, there’s copyright law, which exists to support the work of creative people. “Information wants to be free” is bullshit spread by people who have never spent a minute in their lives trying to create something themselves. Artists need some form of reward.
On the other side, buying and destroying copies of rare books is quite scary. We would lose access to those books if they weren’t digitized. They are creating walls around knowledge that they acquired because there are no laws in place to protect authors.
This is scary, and it reminds me of Fahrenheit 451.
Do not believe Anna’s claims, since physical book sales are plummeting — the main source of income for writers — and shadow libraries are killing the incentive to write. But even more importantly, do not believe AI companies will help you discover and access knowledge.
We might end up with all of humanity’s books digitized and accessible for free, and LLMs capable of writing entire books for us. But there would be no human writers left.
In a world like that, what motivation would we still have to read?
Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
My personal wastebook at home is so rare, it's unique. That doesn't mean it needs preservation.
Your what now? Made from your personal waste? That does sound unique. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wastebook Oh right. But anyway, nobody knows what needs preservation, it's a basic problem of life, somebody usually mentions the BBC throwing out boring old Doctor Who tapes to save archive space because nobody liked it any more at that point in time. Some things should probably be thrown out now and then, I suppose.
The alternative for many of these un(der)appreciated books is that they will get unceremoniously dumped in the future anyway. The publishing industry and libraries etc dispose off lots and lots of books.
So at least with the AI companies they are scanning them and preserving them digitally. Not just in the trained weights, but also as raw training data for future runs.
P.S. I'm not sure why you need to make fun of your own ignorance? Just look up the word you don't know and don't mention it?
Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, have you tried finding out what the programming was in October 1994? Or what cultural ephemera appeared in the TV guides of that era alongside the schedules? Either there's a copy for the week you want in an archive, or somebody's got one for sale, or most often neither. This can piss you off, if as it happened you had a reason to care.
That would make sense as an argument if the natural endpoint of these copies was preservation, and AI was disrupting that. But the natural next step for virtually all these books is to be recycled, not preserved. Books are generally not preserved . It is extremely normal for them to be pulped. Millions and millions of books are pulped every year.
Around a million books are destroyed each day in the US.
Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
To do what?
To not destroy rare books.
Not under US copyright law. The Bartz case ruled that if you scan a book and destroy the original it's considered format-shifting and you're likely fine. But not so for keeping the original and using the scan in its place - Internet Archive tried that (in an incredibly limited way), and publishers sued and won.
So companies scanning books already know they'll be sued, successfully, if they don't destroy the originals. So they destroy the originals.