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

(novaramedia.com)

18 points | by trhway 4 hours ago ago

12 comments

  • m4rtink 20 minutes ago ago

    Destroying books is a crime against humanity. Only bad people willingly destroy books.

  • tayo42 13 minutes ago ago

    I thought that title was misleading. They have to cut the book up to scan it. The way it reads makes it seem like they scan it then destroy it afterwards.

  • ReactiveJelly an hour ago ago

    Glad the news broke. Now the market price for old books will shoot up

  • ompogUe 2 hours ago ago

    Once again, see Rainbows End, by Vernor Vinge. Foresaw exactly this. Written in 2006, takes place in 2025.

  • r-u-serious 26 minutes ago ago

    You know who also destroyed old books? The Nazis!

  • trhway 4 hours ago ago

    "...Internal documents unsealed in legal filings in January revealed that Anthropic was acutely aware of how negatively such a project would be received outside the company.

    “Project Panama is our effort to destructively scan all the books in the world,” an internal planning document said. “We don’t want it to be known that we are working on this.” ..."

    • ronsor 3 hours ago ago

      Don't like it? Change copyright.

      They do this because the law required it.

      • jdiff 2 hours ago ago

        They ignored the same copyright laws in many other cases. Why do we believe they were abiding strictly by it this time?

      • 4gotunameagain 2 hours ago ago

        What did the law require ?

        And since when do AI companies care about copyright law ?

        • ceejayoz an hour ago ago

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

          > After the initial transfer of ownership of a legal copy of a copyrighted work, the first-sale doctrine eliminates the copyright holder's right to control ownership of that specific copy.

          • JohnFen 13 minutes ago ago

            How does the first sale doctrine require these horrific companies to destroy the books?

            As near as I can tell, there is no legal pressure for them to do that. They're destroying them because that's how their scanning machinery works.