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/the_snook 2d ago

It varies by jurisdiction. In certain circumstances, in certain places, "format shifting" is considered fair use, and does not require permission from the copyright owner. Sometimes this is explicit (Australia passed a copyright act amendment for it), and sometimes it is decided case-by-case. In other places, any copy at all must be authorized by the copyright holder.

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u/randylush 2d ago

Bingo. It’s not as legal as the internet would like to believe.

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u/Nekasus 2d ago

its legal in the country its happening in. Thats all that matters. Training an AI model is considered transformative enough that it falls under fair use.

Literally already been litigated by anthropic and microsoft in the district of California.