this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2026
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529
AI companies are now destroying warehouses full of rare books (gardinerbryant.com)
submitted 1 week ago by PerfectDark@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 140 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

There's no legitimate purpose for destroying these books.

There are non-invasive ways scan books. But the destruction is an added bonus. These companies make a copy of these public domain books and then pulp the remains. They're rare, so that means they're hard to find (that's what rare means, after all).

Then, they can turn around and sell their dataset to AI companies.

The destruction is the point.

Capitalism always creates perverse incentives. The most profitable thing you can do is seize something readily available and make it impossible to get without paying you.

But which companies are doing this? It sounds like these are companies that supply training data to AI companies. I think we need names.

[–] kbobabob@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 week ago (2 children)

They destroy them to comply with fair use laws. A judge in San Francisco ruled this practice as fair use.

[–] fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Do you have a case to cite for that? Not calling you out or anything but I want know who the hell ruled that and why. That's insane

[–] kbobabob@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 days ago

Thank you! Though it doesn't seem the judge imposed any requirement to destroy the physical copies just that creating a large digital library from the copies for reuse would violate the IP rights of the work owners

[–] dil@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I think rare here may just mean misprints or something else rather than them destroying the one and only copy of books

[–] yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 week ago

No, they plunder antiquitarian book shops around the globe. There exist very few copies of those books around and they sure aren't digitized anywhere.

[–] dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

I misread that as:

The most profitable thing you can do is seize someone readily available [...]

... and realized that also tracks.

[–] zbyte64@awful.systems 5 points 1 week ago

Like the mangrove forests in Africa and Asia. Scarcity is a feature, not a bug.

[–] HerbGrower@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 week ago

If its public domain couldn't anyone else with a copy make it freely available