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

The worst part is that they are destroying the books afterwards.

Is it really destroying though? They’re digitizing them, and publishers still have the digital copies ready to print more at any time. So it’s not like they’re destroying the texts, they’re just shifting them.

Nobody complained when Google did this over a decade ago 🤷

When you say they’re “destroying the books” you make it sound like they’re erasing one of the last known copy of some important work when in reality, most of these books were purchased in bulk from bookstores and libraries that were planning on discarding them anyway.

Almost all these books were either headed to the dump or the recycling center. They’re just being digitized on the way.

I imagine they were talking about destruction in a practical sense. Disassembling the book and scanning it like that is faster and cheaper than purpose build book scanning machines.

Additionally, court documents indicate they generally just throw them away afterwards. So the knowledge is retained, but that book is destroyed.

tagteam.harvard.edu/hub_feeds/3415/…/14341220

The knowledge is retained and owned by a private corporation who now does not have to share what may have been a still under copyright, but now the corporation owns it? Make it make sense.

Yes. That does make sense.

If you bought a book, scanned it—destroying it in the process—then read it on your computer, that would be completely acceptable.

Why is it wrong when a corporation does the same thing?

They’re not claiming ownership of the copyrights, just ownership of a copy. Which is how copyright works.

Now we just need to proof they’ve copied the files onto a second hard drive, so they own two copies

If we’re gonna keep it as a copyright issue, I think people are mostly mad they’re not able to reprint the books themselves if they wanted to. We’re not speaking from a copyright position