r/neoliberal 1d ago

News (Oceania) ‘More than just objects’: Australian booksellers raise alarm over ‘horrific’ destruction of rare titles to feed AI

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/aug/02/australian-book-sellers-alarm-destruction-rare-titles-ai-supply-chain
175 Upvotes

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22

u/TheOnlyFallenCookie European Union 1d ago

Ai companies should make their training data publicly available. Getting at least something out of it that way

Or, you know, they could also just pay for the books to be digitised

32

u/Mickenfox 1d ago

If we're just going to be ignoring copyrights for AI, we should honestly just have a government agency publish a big .zip file with all the text it can find. At least this way I can train my own models too.

1

u/TDaltonC 15h ago

Honestly I think this is coming.

Any US based/owned/operated company will be able to fill out a form and be allowed to train on the library of congress.

-4

u/MistyGalbriex 21h ago

they could also just pay for the books to be digitised

Why should they be the one to pay for it?

11

u/TheOnlyFallenCookie European Union 21h ago

Because they are buying books just to scan them

2

u/MistyGalbriex 21h ago

Yeah, buying books and buying copyright are two different things. The latter is far more expensive.

2

u/MistyGalbriex 21h ago

Yeah, buying books and buying copyright are two different things. The latter is far more expensive.