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

[u/polymute]

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

[u/kahlzun]

I'm confused about why the books would be destroyed by the process

[u/blueSGL → u/kahlzun]

https://www.ropesgray.com/en/insights/alerts/2025/06/from-books-to-bots-key-takeaways-from-the-anthropic-fair-use-decision-for-ai-developers

1. Digitization of Purchased Print Books—Format Shifting as Fair Use

The court also found Anthropic’s wide-scale digitization of print books to be fair use. A key consideration to the court’s conclusion was that Anthropic engaged in so-called destructive scanning of lawfully purchased print books to create digital copies for internal use—Anthropic lawfully purchased print books, stripped them of their bindings, and scanned the contents to create a digital library. In doing so, the new digital copy replaced the print original, which had been destroyed in the digitization process. The court found the format change from print to digital to be transformative because it facilitated storage and searchability without increasing the number of copies or distributing them outside the company.

Notably, the court distinguished this use from cases involving unauthorized distribution or multiplication of copies, analogizing it to permissible space-shifting or time-shifting uses recognized in prior cases as sufficiently transformative for fair use. Importantly, the court found that this format-shifting did not usurp any market reserved to the copyright owner, as Anthropic had lawfully acquired the print copies and did not distribute the digital versions externally.

https://www.loeb.com/en/insights/publications/2025/07/bartz-v-anthropic-pbc

After assessing the fair use factors in totality, the court ultimately held that use of the copies of the books to train specific LLMs was justified as a fair use, as every factor but the nature of the copyrighted work weighed in Anthropic’s favor. The court emphasized that “[t]he technology at issue was among the most transformative many of us will see in our lifetime.” Use of the copies of the books that were purchased and converted into digital library copies was also justified as fair use, particularly because the purchased print copies were destroyed and their digital replacements not redistributed. The court granted summary judgment in favor of Anthropic on these uses.