this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2026
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As AI tech companies increasingly buy and destroy books to feed to their AI models, Anna's Archive is calling for volunteers to help preserve them for the public record.

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[–] Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 36 points 6 days ago (9 children)

I have access to a book scanner, but I’m not sure what books need to be scanned, are legal to be scanned and uploaded (I don’t want to get expelled for using a school scanner to do something illegal), or whether there is personally identifiable data in the PDFs it generates (I think I can also save in GIF and maybe PNG?). Is there a beginner’s guide anywhere for all this?

[–] Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone 42 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Anna's Archive does have guides for all of that (apart from the legal advice) on their site (use wikipedia to find the right domain).

I don't think you'd want to do so as a university student unless you want to share the same fate as Aaron Swartz though.

[–] Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 20 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Surely at least the stuff out of copyright is kosher to scan and share? Which seems like a good area to focus on if they’re being bought up and destroyed

[–] dan@upvote.au 27 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Stuff that's out of copyright isn't an issue though.

The reason AI companies are destroying books is because current US copyright caselaw (most recently the Anthropic lawsuit) doesn't allow books to be copied, but considers it fair use if you transform the format of a legally purchased book (like from print to digital) without creating a new copy. By destroying the original book, they haven't made a copy of it, and so they operate within US law.

This doesn't apply to public domain books (books that are no longer copyrighted) as you can do whatever you want with public domain content.

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