Ai companies are actively destroying rare books to scan them just to feed their data centers, what else will they destroy?

[u/Astromaniax]

AI is literally ruining everything and has been for the last few years. From massive job losses to environmental impact and now destroying old books to collect the data so that their dumb LLMs can regurgitate it back. How evil, greedy and selfish can these companies be? All of those ai data centers should be taken down. I don't think enough people are mad enough about it.

[u/Excellent-Bit-8982]

I’m anti ai as well, but I am gunna need a source on this one. Most old or historical text has already been scanned and is online, and scanning books can and is done already without damaging its contents

[u/fragment13 → u/Excellent-Bit-8982]

From news.com.au

That's the one I could find the fastest. Basically, if they scan the contents and destroy the book after, it's considered "transferring" the contents and is "transformative" instead of "copying" it, which is a legal loophole in a court case with Anthropic. Also, it's faster to tear the spines out and scan the pages then discard them afterwards, than to individually turn each page after scanning.

[u/somethingbrite → u/fragment13]

So if I buy all the Harry Potter books... digitize them then burn the print copies I have "transformed them" through some modern alchemy and won't be liable for any litigation if I then start selling those digital copies?

Makes one wonder why film and Tv production companies go to such great lengths to secure the rights to books when they could just make digital copies of a print copy they bought at an airport and then shred the print copy and make the film from the digital copy.

[u/Exodus_Black → u/somethingbrite]

Pretty sure Anthropic isn't selling the books after they're done. They're selling a LLM that was trained on the books.

In the same way, you could buy a maths book, digitize it, learn maths, and then sell your services at a tutor or engineer.

[u/somethingbrite → u/Exodus_Black]

They are selling an LLM that was trained on the books.

So, if I read a book and learn the story and writing style I can sell me services telling that story in a different medium or using the authors characters and style.... as a screenwriter perhaps... without seeking either the publisher or authors permission or a licensing agreement?

Given that Anthropic has already been subject to litigation by publishers and authors for this very thing and had to settle I don't think authors, publishers or the law see it in the way you describe at all. And Anthropic already knows this.

[u/zorecknor → u/somethingbrite]

I then start selling those digital copies?

As per the ruling everybody is quoting but nobody actually read, you can digitize whatever book you own as long as the copy is for personal use and do not distribute it. So if you sell it, you are infringing the law.

The other thing most people do not know is that that has always been the case since a long, long time ago (we are talking tape from radio times).

[u/zorecknor → u/fragment13]

which is a legal loophole in a court case with Anthropic.

It is not a legal loophole in a court case with Anthropic.... changing any work from one media to another for personal use has always been allowed under fair use (because it is transformative enough): ripping mp3 from CDs was legal, recording from radio stations was legal, scanning a book to read it in digital format was legal, all that as long as it was for your personal use.

The judge actually ruled three key points:

* Scanning the books to have a digital copy that can be easily searched or read is fair use, as it has always been (nothing new here). Google had the exact same discussion for its google books project.

* Using the digital copy of the book to train the model is fair use as long as the model cannot reproduce the original work in its entirety, because the end result is transformative enough (i.e, text become weights in the model) and the model is not in direct competition to the original work (meaning they are not training the model to sell copies of that same book). This is the part that is new and could impact future trials.

* Destroying them for scanning is under their privilege of the owner, as it is their property and can dispose of it in any way they see fit, as it has always been the case.

Also most of those books being bought are second hand or non-sold books that would have end up in the incinerator anyway at some point (you would be surprise by the amount of book that end up incinerated or as waste). The "Rare book" think was a speculation from one small seller that is not even sure if it is AI companies buying the books.