AI companies are bulk buying rare books, scanning and then shredding them so nobody else has access.
Confirmed.
Enclosure of the cultural commons.
This is the result of poorly thought out anti-AI policy by the way.
"training AI on a book without paying for it is stealing" -> "fine, we'll buy the book"
"if you pay for one copy you can only keep one copy" -> "okay, so we'll shred the physical copy and keep the digital one"
"now nobody can read it!" -> "you couldn't read our copy anyway, because we're not interested in selling it, and you've set up a legal framework where you can't read books without paying for them"
Point 3 has been a problem as long as books and markets have existed. Point 2 is the most common legal solution for digital lending libraries. The only thing that's new is point 1, and that's a direct response to lawsuits that people on this website have long cheered.
Like, I could explain why the original post is ragebait and this isn't anywhere as bad as it sounds but I don't think you'd listen. So like, whatever, be anti-AI, I'm not really pro-AI. But next time you suggest legal policies, be optimistic! Assume it will make a difference! And then use your critical thinking skills (which haven't atrophied bc ur so smart and don't use AI) to think like, anywhere further than one step ahead of the policy.
yeah the op is a tweet from an account with little value (and the article that it's referencing is paywalled) but I really have to clear something up here-- the books are not being destroyed for copyright reasons. companies doing this would have just as much of an argument about keeping the books physically intact and holding them in an archive-- this is what the internet archive does, and though the internet archive has been in hot water for controlled digital lending, the AI companies have a stronger case imo (i am not a lawyer) since they're not directly providing text to the public
anyway the reason they are destroying books is because it's simply MUCH easier to get a fast and clean scan of a book's pages if you cut off the spine and can scan the pages flat.
The process, known as “destructive scanning,” involves cutting the spine from a book so its pages can be fed through high-speed scanners before the remaining physical copy is discarded.
[from a fortune article about the same subject, not paywalled for me but there might be a paywall if you read too many articles idk]
in contrast, the non-destructive scanning by the internet archive is an extremely slow, manual process with significantly more complicated equipment required (and often a worse result! text near the spine can end up warped just from the way the pages are pressed and photographed)
like it's really not a matter of copyright policy here, just the economics of book scanning. if the physical object is not of value to you (because you're not trying to build and maintain a physical library [and maintaining one is a real PITA at scale, so unless you have a reason to do so, you don't want to do so]), it's a lot easier to chop and scan.
I don't think it's known if copyright concerns featured in the original choice of scanning methods, and I agree that it would probably be legal even if they kept the physical copy, but it did help them. Fair use under copyright law is all kindof made up, there are four "factors" and the judge is supposed to weigh them against each other to decide if it's fair or not on the balance, which in practice is mostly done on vibes. In the Anthropic lawsuit, the judge took notice that the originals were destroyed:
All agree on the facts of the format change. Anthropic “destructively scan[ned]” the print copies to create the digital ones. Anthropic or its vendors stripped the bindings from the print books, cut the pages to workable dimensions, and scanned those pages — discarding each print copy while creating a digital one in its place. The digital copy was then housed in the “research library” or “generalized data area” in place of the print copy (Opp. Exh. 22 at 145– 46, 193–94). Authors do not allege and our record does not show that Anthropic provided its converted digital copies of print books to anyone outside Anthropic. […]
Here, for reasons narrower than Anthropic offers, the mere format change was a fair use. Storage and searchability are not creative properties of the copyrighted work itself but physical properties of the frame around the work or informational properties about the work. See Texaco, 802 F. Supp. at 14 (physical), aff’d, 60 F.3d at 919; Google, 804 F.3d at 225 (informational); Sony Corp. of Am. v. Universal City Studios, Inc. (“Sony Betamax”), 464 U.S. 417, 447 (1984) (rightful interests). In Texaco, the court reasoned that if a purchased scientific journal article had been copied “onto microfilm to conserve space, this might [have been] a persuasive transformative use.” 802 F. Supp. at 14 (Judge Pierre Leval), aff’d, 60 F.3d at 919 (reducing “bulk[ ]” “might suffice to tilt the first fair use factor in favor of Texaco if these purposes were dominant“). In Google Books, the court reasoned that a print-to-digital change to expose information about the work was transformative. Google, 804 F.3d at 225 (Judge Pierre Leval). And, in Sony Betamax, the Supreme Court held that making a recording of a television show in order to instead watch it at a later time was copying but did not usurp any rightful interest of the copyright owner. 464 U.S. at 447, 455. Important to the Supreme Court’s reasoning was the expectation that most such copiers would not distribute the permanent copies of the work. Finally, in A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc., our court of appeals recognized the reasoning just explained, and therefore rejected by contrast a digitization effort that was touted as space-shifting but in fact resulted in the multiplication of copies shared with outsiders through a file-sharing service. 239 F.3d 1004, 1019 (9th Cir. 2001), aff’g in this part 114 F. Supp. 2d 896, 912–13, 915–16 (N.D. Cal. 2000) (Judge Marilyn Hall Patel) (citing Sony Betamax and Texaco).
Here, every purchased print copy was copied in order to save storage space and to enable searchability as a digital copy. The print original was destroyed. One replaced the other. And, there is no evidence that the new, digital copy was shown, shared, or sold outside the company. This use was even more clearly transformative than those in Texaco, Google, and Sony Betamax (where the number of copies went up by at least one), and, of course, more transformative than those uses rejected in Napster (where the number went up by “millions” of copies shared for free with others).
Yes, Anthropic is a commercial outfit. And, this order takes for granted that Anthropic in fact benefited from the print-to-digital format change — or it would not have gone to all the trouble. But the crux of the first fair use factor’s concern for “commercial” use is in protecting the copyright owners and their entitlements to exploit their copyright as they see fit (or not). See, e.g., Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enters., 471 U.S. 539, 562 (1985). That the accused is a commercial entity is indicative, not dispositive. That the accused stands to benefit is likewise indicative. But what matters most is whether the format change exploits anything the Copyright Act reserves to the copyright owner. Anthropic already had purchased permanent library copies (print ones). It did not create new copies to share or sell outside. [...]
As a result, Anthropic’s format-change from print library copies to digital library copies was transformative under fair use factor one. Anthropic was entitled to retain a copy of these works in a print format. It retained them instead in a digital format, easing storage and searchability.
So keeping the physical book should still be transformative under Google, but destroying it is "even more clearly transformative".
To spell it out as clearly as possible:
It is *copyright law* that is the enclosure of the cultural commons. If you don't believe that, ask yourself why Disney can sue you for painting Disney Princesses - most of which are characters from 300-year-old folktales - on the wall of a daycare.
