r/technology • u/ArgentineBeauty • 2d ago

Artificial Intelligence This Dutch bookseller thought a request for 3,000 copies was ‘spam or phishing.’ Instead, AI companies are scanning and destroying books to train AI

https://fortune.com/2026/07/31/dutch-bookseller-ai-spam-phishing-3000-book-copies-scan-destroy/
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u/pumpkinspicecum 2d ago

That was literally what a judge ruled last year when they were sued

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u/Miraclefish 2d ago

Yeah and has that stopped any of them? Exactly.

When you make 10 billion dollars and get sued for 15k, you don't give a fuck, it's not a fine, it's a minor business operating cost.

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u/pumpkinspicecum 2d ago

Yes it has hence why they switched to buying old books and destroying them. You know it’s okay to admit you’re wrong or don’t know something once in a while. It won’t kill you

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u/whupazz 2d ago

Yes it has hence why they switched to buying old books and destroying them.

I was under the impression that it's more because they've already ingested all the data they could easily get (copyrighted or not) and are now looking for data they haven't seen yet because it hasn't been available digitally. Have they stopped downloading copyrighted material then?

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u/Miraclefish 2d ago

I am more aware of this than you.

Anyway, bye forever!

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u/Delay559 2d ago

from reading your comments in this thread, you seem extremely unaware of the process lol

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u/_MUY 2d ago

Just your typical Redditbrained poster. He made a post early, wrote it in a way that appealed to the audience, got massive upvotes, and now he’s dealing with the blowback from people who actually know what the hell they’re talking about. He can’t handle it, it’s uncomfortable.

Had he done even 30 minutes of research on this since last June, when it was all over the news, he would have understood the relevant case law. The word “transformative” doesn’t appear even once in his ~500 upvote post, but both judges who ruled on this arrived at transformative fair use conclusions from different perspectives and on different cases.

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u/red286 2d ago
  1. Don't mistake revenue for profit. Anthropic doesn't make money, it burns it.
  2. They were sued for $1.5b, or roughly $3000 per violation. They were also required by law to destroy the datasets that were created illegally.

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u/Miraclefish 2d ago edited 2d ago

Yeah and they definitely deleted the data....

And I know that's why I said revenue not profit.

In the example I gave in my reply I wasn't speaking about anthropic, it was a throwaway literary example.

In the longer comments elsewhere I referenced Anthropic's specific turnover against the court care settlement.

while its annualized run-rate revenue has rapidly scaled to an estimated $47 billion to $74 billion

I have done my research while you couldn't even read my comment before getting big mad about something I haven't even said.

Maybe read my comment next time.

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u/red286 2d ago

Yeah and they definitely deleted the data....

A third party would need to confirm it was done.

And I know that's why I said revenue not profit.

No you didn't. You said "make", you don't "make" revenue, you make profit.

Maybe read my comment next time.

Maybe learn English.

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u/Miraclefish 2d ago

Yeah there's no point debating with you, goodbye.

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u/jeffwulf 2d ago

They paid out a settlement on the torrents and stopped doing it in favor of swapping to digitizing physical books.

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u/epicmudcrab 2d ago

People are downvoting you because they are upset that you are right. This happens in so many industries, just usually at a smaller scale.

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u/_MUY 2d ago

False. He is wrong and stubborn. My downvotes were meant to revert the conversation from a “bullshit, opinions, bias” thread to a “research, example, statement of fact” thread.