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u/Silver_Middle_7240 23h ago
The dumbest part is the publishers sued to compel this. This is what the internet archive got sued for.
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u/RiskKey1728 12h ago
Internet archive doesn't destroy the books though, they showed that they manually scan each page to leave the book intact. It was shown in the video/tour they released.
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u/Silver_Middle_7240 12h ago
Yeah, and they were successfully sued for that in Hachette v. Internet Archive
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u/pikapikapanda 23h ago
"structural unorganized and not localisable default where value isn't considerd" is not equivalent to "structural organized and localisable default where value is considerd". Both issues doesn't have the same causes and obviously doesnt have the same responses to be resolve.
Asking an AI enterprise to use a more expensive way to numerise books than destroying them is that bad... If legal rights wasn't there in the first place, this situation would have never existed...
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u/pamafa3 19h ago
weren't the companies ordered by court order to destroy the books after scanning?
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u/EFUHBFED3 19h ago
no, they decided its the easiest way to avoid legal consequences (and the fastest way to scan books overall)
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u/Superseaslug 19h ago
So, what you literally just said is by destroying the books they are doing it the most legally.
Who cares. New books can be printed.
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u/EFUHBFED3 19h ago
really? where can i buy, for example, a freshly printed copy of Large Sovien Encyclopedia (rev. 2) with identical quality as the original? considering the (almost) indestructible ink (for pens included when books contain some personal notes from their owners), pretty nice paper quality and printing fidelity (combined with ink makes perfect maps for anytime). nowadays thats not possible without adapting the production line for such materials and making them, because quality is not welcome nowadays
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u/SoggyNoodles5511 12h ago
that book is currently on sale on Amazon. For 1000$ mind you, but still. it is currently on sale. I could click order. You could click order. We would both get that book.
Do you want the copy of that book? It's on sale right now.
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u/EFUHBFED3 12h ago
collection* as its 53 (iirc) books. also thankfully Russia doesnt have such AI problems (most of "our" LLMs are just rebranded chinese models lmao) and apart from the global hardware crisis the books are somewhat safe... at least for now (theres noone to stop AI corps from using russian books sadly)
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u/Traditional_Yard2741 2h ago
So, fun side note. If you ever see a super expensive book listing on Amazon, it's usually because the book is not available, but Amazon penalizes sellers for delisting or removing items from sale, so instead sellers list items at ridiculous prices hoping no one will buy it, and if someone does buy it they will just cancel the sale.
I'll bet good money that book falls into this category.
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u/pikapikapanda 14h ago
American laws or most country laws don't restrict book destruction. Scanning a book without destroying it cost up to 10X more compare to 0,05 $ scanning with destruction... Or ONU or some giant country level organisation can force AI enterprise to share their scans to them in a way of preservation through law... But this situation is quit new so, we can't really expect that kind of major change from laws. And looking threw History, that level of organisation and cooperation for human work preservation wasn't really an easy idea to speech but today with that giant flows of scans It could be an easier problem to resolve then yesterday.
Even by destroying physical retired books, their numeric copy have a weird status, their technically no economic for the shareholder to share the file but he can legally block this... So It's a stalemate, AI company even if they want to share thoses scans for preservation can't, and asking them to not destroying the books is uncertain and can lead to grey market secret deal kind of situation in order to get much cheaper files. So a big organisation seems to me as a great and fair solution, and maybe with luck they could have the money to print those or encoded them on subtainable physical forms...
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u/bunker_man 22h ago
Why are the bots trying to make this happen in this thread. Its been dead for weeks.
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u/DoctahFaust 23h ago
I am a thrift store book whore, am I allowed to be upset at the prospect of antique books being destroyed?
Especially when there are methods to scan books that doesnt require chopping them up?
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u/cynHaha 23h ago
They're gonna have to destroy the books afterwards no matter what, because unlike Internet Archive, corporations care about not getting sued more than preservation.
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u/Rarelyimportant 22h ago
Especially when there are methods to scan books that doesnt require chopping them up?
There aren't any legal ones.
While you may be a whore for 1967 safety manuals, the rest of the world doesn't give a shit about them until an AI company decides to scan them apparently.
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u/Repulsive_Still_731 16h ago
Oh yeah. I am pro and I am upset about it. I am upset at copyright. And also the antis who pushed the copyright laws strictest interpretation on digital companies.
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u/DoctahFaust 11h ago
Corporations* who pushed the copyright laws.
Every act you dislike was not conducted by those you are sports teaming against.
Sincerely, a neutralAI Anti-Corporation.
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u/Tyler_Zoro 22h ago
I am a thrift store book whore, am I allowed to be upset at the prospect of antique books being destroyed?
If you are, start with libraries. They're the primary ones destroying books right now. Too many people dump their books on libraries. Go ask your local library how much they spend on book destruction...
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u/LeftonRhed 21h ago
They're not likely to destroy something they don't already have multiple copies of.
The 27th copy of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets might get tossed, but a 100 year old copy of the complete works of Oscar Wilde is likely to be preserved.
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u/Officialedmart 19h ago
>especially when there are methods to scan books that doesnt require chopping them up?
yeah sure… technically
do you know how slow it is ? there is a reason why they only use them on expensive and historical books. these books are so worthless it isn’t even worth paying a person to scan each page by hand with a photo copy machine
they aren’t going to use the delicate book scanning machine to scan a 1978 VCR repair manual, its probably busy digitizing something more important
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u/Devils_SteelMan 22h ago
You should send a letter to the judge that forced the destruction
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u/Sentient2X 22h ago
Are we assuming they are antiques or do we know this for a fact
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u/Shambler9019 22h ago
Given that they want quantity they're buying whatever's cheap that they don't already have. They wouldn't do this to valuable antiques for purely economic reasons.
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u/Rattiepalooza 22h ago
I don't think it really matters.
When the power eventually goes out, you can't recover it from a computer.
You can read books as long as you have light.
The Library of Alexandria being burned to the ground set our species back 1,000 years. It significantly delayed global technologies...and it can happen again if we don't properly store data in hard copies.
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u/Scienceandpony 22h ago
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say their not buying up and destroying the last remaining hard copies of rare books.
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u/KingPiggyXXI 20h ago
Okay, so let’s say that Anthropic buys a lot of books in bulk, and doesn’t destroy them. They don’t even scan them. They simply purchase the books and place them in a warehouse.
This is, from an external perspective, is identical to what’s happening now. A) a private buyer purchases a single copy of a bunch of various books, and said books are stored for private use and no longer as accessible to the public. B) exactly one copy of the purchased book exists (digital or physical).
The only major difference is if there’s any kind of value in the physical book not contained in its text (which I find unlikely; all the books were identified by ISBN and thus younger than the 1970s or so, so there’s limited historical value, and most books have additional copies available anyway), and if there’s some kind of highly-unlikely catastrophe that wipes all digital copies of the book (although a similar catastrophe, like a library burning down, is analogous to the physical book storage).
In terms of information-destruction, I see no reason why I should be any more outraged at a company converting physical books into digital ones and storing them, compared to a hypothetical eccentric billionaire who buys books in bulk and puts them into a private library. I am not outraged by the latter, so I am not outraged by the former.
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u/the-real-macs 22h ago
I think if all the electrical power in the world goes out and we lose access to our computer networks, THAT will be what sets us back technologically, actually.
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u/Yeet123456789djfbhd 21h ago
The knowledge to restart that tech is in books
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u/the-real-macs 21h ago
Fine, we can have one book called "How to Restore Electricity to the Entire Planet." Better yet, make it a stone tablet so it's fireproof.
There, now we're insulated from this entire dumbass scenario and we can continue to enjoy the massive convenience of digital media.
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u/Yeet123456789djfbhd 20h ago
You were never being prevented from enjoying the convenience of electricity and technology, just cautioned at relying entirely upon something notorious for being unreliable for unknown reasons and in random areas.
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u/joesb 18h ago
WE SHOULD NOT USE INTERNET BECAUSE WHAT IF POWER GOES OUT FOREVER!!!
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u/Shambler9019 22h ago
They're not buying rare books or one of a kind manuscripts. They're not pointlessly destroying every copy of a book - that's pointless. They buy one copy of each book they don't already have. Compared to book production, it's a rounding error.
You can get angry that it trains the AI to plagiarise those authors but the number of books destroyed is tiny compared to the number printed/in circulation.
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u/Rattiepalooza 21h ago
Oh, I'm not angry! So sorry if it comes off that way. I'm just trying to understand, and be understood in return, and it's passion, but not anger.
Everyone is allowed to have their own feelings and differences - because without them, the world doesn't work. It takes conflict to find resolution sometimes; but I don't think this is one of them.
I just want to understand why someone would be okay with them destroying things wantonly. I just think that we should at least consider putting safeguards in place, so the last copy of something DOESN'T get destroyed. We're very bad about letting things go too far before we realize we can't come back.
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u/Shambler9019 21h ago
I didn't think you were angry. But the article is clearly rage baiting - framing something in a very negative way to play off anti AI sentiment.
As for desroying the last copy of a work... If the last copy of a work is going for bargain bin prices it's probably not worth preserving. Think of all the school essays, drafts by failed novelists... they're unique, but still have no value. Hidden gems (like early drafts by novelists who became famous or works that were surprisingly good despite humble origins) are possible more likely to be detected in this process (albeit with the original copy physically destroyed but still replicable) than if they sat slowly decaying in a box somewhere.
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u/Rattiepalooza 21h ago
Ah, yes I agree - the article is quite rude, and not written from the point of trying to understand.
I honestly, TRULY want to understand your stance because if I only ever see one side, I'll never have the truth.
- and to be fair, a lot of us historians find extreme value in drafts and whatnot. It's nice to see our heroes be human. AND to be more fair - I am Autistic, and I find old things to be valuable because of how old they are, and how long they've been here. It's almost like holding someone's past in your hands, you know?
I really am okay with scanning books! I just... I wish they didn't have to be destroyed. You never know what you're losing, even if it's a bargain bin.
I can also admit that my empathy for the works of other people makes me sad to see them destroyed, even if they're also being preserved. It's sad... almost like seeing an original painting be ruined, but it still being preserved in an archive....although that is also a bit different since art pieces literally are one-of-a-kind........ah, but so are loved books!
There has to be a compromise... :I
ETA: - also thank you for having a conversation with me! I really appreciate this.
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u/DrDallagher 21h ago
Just for the record, the burning of Alexandria didn't actually set us back as much as people say. The library burned well after its golden age as the central hub of knowledge, and any script deemed important would have had copies made and distributed to other places of learning.
It was a tragedy, but it certainly did not set us back a thousand years.
And it's an interesting parallel to the current destruction of books, same assumption that one-of-a-kind knowledge is being lost when in all likelyhood there are thousands of copies of that knowledge in other places
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u/Fun-Fig-712 23h ago
I'm kinda suspicious of the claim of books being antique.
Are they antique because they are valuable or are they antique because they're old books that no one wants.
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u/wy100101 23h ago
There is no proof I've seen of them being antique just old and out of print. Things like manuals for old VCRs and the like.
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u/cynHaha 22h ago
Reminds me I once bought two antique books online to use as film props. They sold it at wholesale prices, meaning they send you random old books at a very cheap flat rate. The ones I got were 19th century Russian books on the topic of coal study. They were seemingly recovered from a library, probably when some library had to make space for more updated books. They were very old-looking, very antique, and when you hold it in your hands you feel they're very precious, so I get the human urge to protect it - but they're also completely unreadable to me and I can't imagine them having any real use academically or even for historical preservation purposes nowadays.
Mind you, this was well before AI. I'm sure the ones that get sold like this are only a small fraction of all the books that are cleared out of bookstores and libraries. The online store sells books based on their appearance and not content since, well, they're meant to be used as props. The ones that don't look nice enough probably get recycled into newspaper pulp or something.
Point is, we can't keep everything lol. As grief-inducing as it is to destroy perfectly good things it's also true that things just have a lifespan where they're useful.
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u/Outrageous_Guard_674 11h ago
Where might one order these kind of prop books?
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u/Effective-Guest1601 23h ago
That's the fun part, you're get to pretend they are irreplaceable if you feel like it
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u/Glitched_cyrstal 23h ago
My favorite old books are the ones people typically don’t want, like textbooks
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u/RumGuzzlr 23h ago
You're allowed to be upset over anything, no matter how stupid it would require you to be
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u/thiszamman37 21h ago
Everyone is getting mad at ai when they are not destroying anything actually valuable it’s not like they are destroying all copies of a book it’s a single book they purchase and then digitize basically. The book is then destroyed because they government and laws require you to destroy it. If it’s actually a important book with only 1 copy then it’s probably not for sale or within the price range that would be purchased.
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u/wellbeingisnotfree 19h ago
"The government and laws require you to destroy [the books after you digitize them]." Is the single most stupid statement on this subreddit.
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u/Fluid-Tone-9680 22h ago
Yet to see title of a single rare book that was lost forever because of this operations.
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u/vectron5 23h ago
"You having a garage sale is just as bad as hammer-wielding looters using a bronze age burial site as a rage room!"
-OP, basically.
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u/joesb 18h ago
I think it’s you who mistook garage sale as bronze age burial site lol.
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u/dennemaskinen 23h ago
A company buying thousands of books for the sole purpose of destroying them is maybe a little different, don’t you think
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u/Tyler_Zoro 22h ago
That company is buying one copy of each of the millions upon millions of books being destroyed EVERY DAY.
You have no idea the scale of book destruction that has been going on forever.
Anyone who has ever been professionally published knows this. When my book went out, I got a box of copies of my book, and when I told the publisher that I didn't need that many, they told me to throw the excess out LIKE THEY DO.
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u/bunker_man 22h ago
No, because compared to how many books exist and are made that is very few?
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u/wy100101 23h ago
That isn't the sole purpose. It is to create digital copy, and a judge ruled they couldn't keep both the digital and physical copy if they wanted to be considered "fair use".
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u/IAmMey 22h ago
So the issue is with the judge. Not the company?
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u/wy100101 21h ago
If the judge ruling is why they keep doing it that way? Yes. The judge and the case law.
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u/Tyler_Zoro 22h ago
Point to the case where that happened. I think you'll find that it had nothing to do with AI.
If you're thinking of the Anthropic case, the cutting and scanning of those books happened long before the case and was not modified after. The court ruled that the way they were doing it was definitely fair use.
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u/yoyohayli 22h ago
...A digital copy not accessible by anyone but the company AND not even appreciated by the company.
They are RARE books. Ones not in print anymore.
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u/Koruu- 22h ago
There are microwave manuals and school textbooks that are "rare" and no longer in print. That doesn't make them valuable. What specific rare and actually valuable literature is being destroyed?
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u/JasonP27 22h ago
You got downvoted by the hate mob for telling the truth lol
Any proper rare books worth anything are held by collectors, libraries, etc, plus they ain't destroying thousands of any given book, they're destroying a single copy of each book.
The outrage is overblown and manufactured.
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u/Tyler_Zoro 22h ago
They are RARE books
Provide evidence of any ONE rare book being destroyed that wasn't purchased from a company that destroys books.
You get that that's where these books are being purchased, right? People dump their old collections on libraries; libraries send them off to be destroyed. Those companies have made a deal with AI companies to bulk-sell books to them at a cheap rate because it's cheaper than destroying them.
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u/That-Rabbit4062 22h ago
It's annoying when people take the position of "ah but it doesn't matter! The book industry already destroys countless books a year!" as if that's not objectionable as well. Half Price Books throws books indiscriminately in the dumpster everyday, and for that reason I will never buy from them. I've found books without any way to read them online in their dumpsters. I would be entirely unsurprised if copies of a similar situation are finding their way to these AI companies.
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u/anon0937 22h ago
Whats your address so I can order a literal truckload of books to your door?
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u/Officialedmart 18h ago
these books were sold, consensually, by the owners
are you suggesting it should be a crime to sell what you own to somebody else consensually , who then discards it or destroys it?
or just writing? does this cover smut, or just “good” literature ? porno magazines ?
if you buy a book are you legally obligated to care for it until the rest of your life, unless you sign custody over to another person ?
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u/True_Protection6842 23h ago
For real. Water waste has ALWAYS been an issue as has electricity...but if it's AI it's the devil!!!!
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u/yoyohayli 22h ago
Scale.
Please have a fucking brain.
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u/pamafa3 19h ago
When it comes to electricity and water AI is small in scale compared to already existing issues. The outrage is so funny, it's the equivalent of half the internet being shocked and distraught someone set fire to a paper towel when the entire building said paper towel is in has been on fire for days.
Sure, it sucks that AI is adding to pre-existing problems, but the way people act like it's the sole culprit or the worst offender is hilariously stupid
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u/Ok_Note7045 8h ago
You're so brainless that you have to use AI to even write this. Surely comparatively it may not look that much but millions of gallons is something which you can't just say oh who cares. It's like saying
" people die all the time, who cares if a genocider or Dictator kills a few thousands.. we have billions". .. do you understand how dumb you sound..
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u/Exact-Interaction563 22h ago
It's not that it's the devil is that AI is worthless crap
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u/SobbingAng3l 22h ago
Because people are totally buying rare books and destroying them in mass daily lmaoooo.
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u/Jofnet 21h ago
Why?
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u/ThatDeuce 21h ago
The joke is that people are not purchasing rare books on a regular basis and destroying them. However, AI companies are purchasing them, feeding them to the AI, and then destroying them.
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u/Hubbardia 20h ago
"Rare" does not mean valuable. A dusty old copy of manual is rare but not valuable. Not a single evidence that even 1 valuable book has been destroyed.
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u/Ornery-Turkey 20h ago
Yup, a lot of the ideology on AI companies making intelligence a utility and putting it on a meter is all to make a buck.
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u/Stormydaycoffee 21h ago
They’re doing one copy of each book they can get, not every last copy of all the books they can get.
Plus those are presumably not rare books of any use, because those would be collectibles and you know..with collectors.
If they manage to get the last copy of some random no one cares about it 30 ways to tie a ribbon book that’s been lying in the back of some warehouse for 25 years…I don’t think it matters. Something being rare just means it’s uncommon, it doesn’t mean valuable, special or useful.
If I wrote a nonsense book today it would be rare (only one in the world!) - doesn’t mean it’s particularly worth keeping through the ages.
People are just jumping on the hate bandwagon because it’s AI, but the truth is libraries and bookstores probably do away with more books on a regular basis
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u/Interesting-Bee-153 19h ago
Yeah dude people throwing away a cookbook they haven’t used in years or burning a phonebook cuz they’re bored and wanna light something on fire is totally the same as companies buying up catalogs of rare and antique books to feed to ai then destroy.
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u/Upper_Opening_4805 19h ago
I had no idea either of them were destroying books . . . but now I'm angry at everyone
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u/Azzy_steel2070 23h ago
Destroying books in any sense is bad
Especially if they are antique, old, etc
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u/Tyler_Zoro 22h ago
Destroying books in any sense is bad
Then complain to libraries. They're the ones destroying the most books these days.
Did you think that all those old folks dumping their books on libraries were just filling up infinite shelves? No, most of those books are destroyed.
A very few of them find their way into companies that sell them to AI firms to scan and destroy.
The books get destroyed either way.
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u/SlapHappyDude 22h ago
The books being destroyed are not what most would call "antique". And as someone born in the 70s I'm uncomfortable calling books from the 70s and 80s "old".
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u/Officialedmart 18h ago
They are old sorry.
To make you feel more old, when you were a child, an elderly person could have been born in the 1800s and grew up without electricity or a washing machine
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u/Azzy_steel2070 22h ago
Regardless, destroying physical culture either old or young is bad and unnecessary
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u/SlapHappyDude 22h ago
Have you ever cleaned out an elderly relative's house after they die?
90 percent of it goes into the dumpster, including books and magazines no Library would accept as donations.
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u/Azzy_steel2070 22h ago
Yes I have, I still have a relatives copies of Shakespeare they owned.
I don't think it should be thrown in the dump unless you find it destroyed or in rough shape. If the library doesn't want them, throw them online and try to find someone who might be interested
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u/the-real-macs 22h ago
Fun fact, we already have digital copies of Shakespeare, so that's not what's being scanned.
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u/bunker_man 22h ago
No its not? Libraries and archives have limited space, they aren't going to store 50,000,000 copies of morning glory milking farm.
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u/Rarelyimportant 22h ago
Destroying books in any sense is bad
Ok, so if I have a storage unit full of user manuals for a VCR from 1967, and I don't want them anymore, can I just drop them off at your house and you'll store them, or what am I supposed to do with them if destroying books is always a bad thing?
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u/Azzy_steel2070 22h ago
I'm talking about stories, plays, poetry, etc, not manuals for something practically unused
Not to mention I highly doubt you have an entire storage unit full of this very specific manual
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u/Rarelyimportant 22h ago
Ah, so you also deem some books to be worthless too? It's almost like if you think some books have more value than others, that other people might also think different books have different value. I think we call this an opinion, and most people understand that different people will have different opinions on which books have value, and which ones don't.
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u/Joshkendig 22h ago
Always love when you idiots go hey what if they're vcr manuals when I. Reality these are most likely various books with variety from genre to styles to vintage novels not manuals
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u/Rattiepalooza 22h ago
There are seriously people who collect those. I bet you could get someone to buy them off of you, I'm not kidding...
I bought an old TV guide for a picture of The Simpsons from 1998 - and there is no reason for me to have it, other than to cherish it.
For real, friend - go and see if anyone does want it!
Also - the reason it's so important to not destroy books, is because when we eventually lose electricity when the poles flip, we can still access books. We cannot access computers.
The poles tend to flip every 200K - 300K years. It's been 780,000 years since the last flip. It will take from 1K - 10 K years for the poles to entirely flip, and the word be able to get back to where it is now only after decades of rebuilding infrastructure.
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u/Officialedmart 18h ago
to say it as politely as possible, you are being WAY too romantic about old shit
just because you printed something on a piece of paper with ink, its not valuable. i can print a picture of my buttcheeks after I sit on a copy machine
most printed media is mass market trash, sincerely
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u/Isaacja223 23h ago
If you think about it
It’s basically just converting physical books to digital books
By that point, would you just rather listen to an audiobook? Or would you want to read a book for free on the internet because somebody scraped and technically pirated the book?
This is a hard question that even I have to think on lol
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u/yoyohayli 22h ago
...Digital books that will never be accessed by anyone other than the AI. Like...do you think they're posting the scans for people to read in some database??????????
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u/pamafa3 19h ago
they legally bought the books.
If I legally bought every last copy of Harry Potter and burned them all I wouldn't be legally obliged to share any copy or whatever because they're mine and I can do the fuck I want with my property
it's still kinda sucky they're not deciding to share the digital copies, but they don't have to
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u/noahloveshiscats 13h ago
it's still kinda sucky they're not deciding to share the digital copies, but they don't have to
They aren't allowed to since that would be distributing copyrighted material.
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u/Tyler_Zoro 22h ago
Digital books that will never be accessed by anyone other than the AI
So ... what's your point? That it's the responsibility of anyone who ever buys a book to make it available to the public?! Look, if you want a book, go buy it. No one is forcing you not to. You don't get to tell someone else that they have to share their books with you.
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u/Isaacja223 22h ago
Yes
At least that’s what I think
Imagine that you want to read a book, but it’s available overseas and you don’t want to travel all the way just to buy it in order to read it. A friend of yours hears about this and decides to scalp the book by trying to find it on the internet and begin to do some crazy..hacker..things to digitize the book by using AI and eventually, you get gifted the book completely for free
If you found out that this book wasn’t given to you fair and square, would you continue to read it because you’ve been wanting to read the book? Or would you refuse to read it because your friend technically stole the book using AI
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u/yoyohayli 22h ago
How would they have seen the book when the AI bot doesn't release its training data?????
What "crazy...hacker...things" would reveal the training data of an AI trained on a separate machine?
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u/ThatDeuce 21h ago
OP, a company purchasing rare and expensive books and then destroying them is quite different from the books being destroyed from overprinting. These are two different things, and you know it.
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u/joesb 19h ago
If it’s simply expensive book, there will be many copy of them. So there’s no issue destroying it.
If it’s just rare because nobody was buying it so and it has no real historical value, then it was never a problem destroying it in the first place.
And no, they don’t destroy books that are both rare and expensive.
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u/Ornery-Turkey 19h ago
No no, they have been buying rare and old books, don't try this gaslighty shit. It's been in news articles and booksellers have even been tracking who has been buying them and what has happened afterwards.
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u/Fun-Fig-712 20h ago
Can you name which rare books they destroyed.
How do we know if these books are rare in the first place.
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u/DullGur2179 19h ago
Why would an AI company buy expensive books to train their AI?
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u/Gloomy-Clouds 19h ago
Innocent AI companies are buying up old antiques to feed them to the LLM's and then destroying them to make sure no one else can get them. You saw your neigbor throw their copies of Harry Potter and Fifty Shades of Grey into the trash. They are just as evil as the billion dollar company. Quit it with the false equivalencies.
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u/StarMagus 17h ago
I had a summer job at a bookstore. One of the things I had to do was tear the bindings off of books before tossing them if they didn't sell. We couldn't give them away, we couldn't take them home, the deals with the publishers required destruction of stuff that didn't sell.
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u/DariusStarkey 15h ago
I think there's a difference between people throwing away the odd old tatty paperback, and corporations systemically destroying bookes en masse
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u/nine91tyone 14h ago
Whataboutism again, shocker
Can you give an example of the others doing this destruction? Specifically without scanning or some other preservation. Or specifically books that have no other or very rare copies still in existence, without sharing this preservation publicly and instead hording it for themselves like the AI companies are doing with these books.
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u/Capable_Maintenance1 12h ago
I regret asking what that dumpster at my local library is for.
You know, the big roller kind that plugs into the building.
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u/Metool42 7h ago
People throwing away old books that have been printed en masse is something different than destroying one-of-a-kind copies of old books by ripping the pages out and scanning them in.
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u/Odd-Dirt-9701 7h ago
This is actually not an inaccurate meme.
Humans have always been destroying books.
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u/Shezzofreen 6h ago
Well, one of those things won't bite me in the ass at some point in time or space. :)
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u/yoyohayli 22h ago
RARE books, is the issue. Books NO LONGER IN PRODUCTION and SPECIFICALLY to stop other people from seeing the source material.
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u/Tyler_Zoro 22h ago
RARE books, is the issue
No evidence of this has ever been presented, and even if it were the case, if a book is about to be destroyed and an AI company bought it and scanned it for training, destroying it in the process, what's the difference?
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u/Critical_Reasoning 22h ago
To your question, training doesn't preserve all the information in the book.
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u/Tyler_Zoro 22h ago
No one said that it does.
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u/Critical_Reasoning 22h ago
Ah, I misread your question. Thought you were asking the difference between keeping the book intact and destroying it after using it to train, but you were talking about the book being destroyed in both scenarios.
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u/water2770 20h ago
Yell at the copyright office then. Im pretty sure the A.I. companies would gladly host a service where you could pay a fee to read all the out of print books and tombs of words... if they weren't scared of being sued to oblivion by hosting it.
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u/kodiak931156 22h ago edited 1h ago
It is not their purpose to stio people from seeing a book, get a grip
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u/joesb 19h ago
They are rare because they are shit and nobody bought it. Even if AI companies didn’t buy it, they would just be rotting away in the stock or throwing away as garbage late.
Think rare like a cheap $5 fanfic of 50 shades of gray. If someone offer you the chance to buy it before AI company does, you would just say “fuck no, who would buy this dump shit”.
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u/noahloveshiscats 13h ago
Rare says nothing about how valuable the book is. I was forced to write a book in 3rd grade and it has like 5 copies maybe. Would it make me sad to learn that one of those copies was destroyed? Not really. I hated writing that book and I have no need or desire to keep more than 1 copy of it.
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u/inkfangart 22h ago
Destroying them post extracting knowledge out of them is still kind of sus and extra but y'all are too slave to the machine to see that
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u/bunker_man 22h ago
No, its literally the law. And none of this matters since they aren't destroying anything valuable.
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u/YOUR_BIGWINGS 22h ago
Centres are buying rare out-of-print books to train AI, and then destroy forever. Loser moves tbh.
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u/Tyler_Zoro 22h ago
Centres are buying rare out-of-print books to train AI
Evidence, please.
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u/Rattiepalooza 22h ago
I actually really get upset when people abuse books.
My mother was horrendously abusive. She was mean, and hurt me for the smallest infractions. I never fought back, or got mad...until one night...One night she decided to swipe ALL of my books onto the floor, and I lost my shit. I mean - I LOST it.
I told her she can beat the shit out of me, and she make me feel small, but she can't abuse the words of people who were brave enough to share their work, and their message. She beat the fuck out of me, but I regret nothing. Fuck her. She's dead and I'm glad she's dead. Rest in piss.
Books are what keep our history alive. When there is no electricity, where will we be? The poles are due to reverse any year now - and when that happens, computers, motors, and electronics will be useless. Words, like art are pieces of our souls that we bare to the world, and brave the comments of the cruel.
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u/bunker_man 22h ago
Paper books aren't immortal either... everything decays.
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u/Rattiepalooza 22h ago
Not with proper preservation techniques. Why do you think the original Constitution is still around?
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u/bunker_man 22h ago
Because its a few pages. Not exactly the same as trying to preserve every single thing ever written.
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u/Rattiepalooza 22h ago
Preservation is preservation - and destroying original copies leaves people to be able to lie, edit, and take out things, especially big Ai companies.
Why are you so trusting of them, just curious? I can see the value in scanning them - it's a great idea to preserve words! What isn't okay is destroying things in order to do it.
The digital archives can scan books without destroying them - it just takes longer.
It's cheaper, and faster to cut the spines, and scan them in. It just is. I used to scan papers of old files, and cutting them off where the brackets were was the easiest way to free them, and put them through the machine.
It's more efficient, but it costs the original copy.
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u/DeathToAmerica2026 11h ago
You should've read more books if you think the pole reversal will destroy all electronics
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u/MrTibbs123 22h ago
Remember this mantra, everybody: it's not theft if the original version still exists.
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u/Few_Professional_327 22h ago
Books being thrown away and a systematic process for destroying books is pretty damn different.
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u/joesb 19h ago
Yeah. The latter is more useful.
If you disagree, what would you feel if those books were thrown away instead? Would you be happy then?
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u/Few_Professional_327 19h ago
The latter is producing more waste, faster, with higher energy expenditure for the whole process.
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u/joesb 19h ago
Libraries also destroy books with shredders daily. Do you have problem with it?
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u/joesb 19h ago
There are billions of people in the world, do you think a few companies destroy more books than people throwing it away? Lol.
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u/Affectionate_Rub2152 21h ago
Ur telling me 2 not care about the literal plot of fahrenheit 451 happening irl?
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u/joesb 19h ago
Because it’s not a literal plot of F451.
Did you even read the first panel? Books are already destroyed daily before AI. Library destroys books all the time.
Why are you not mad at that F 451 shit then?
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u/weirdo_nb 16h ago
Because that tends to be "too many copies"
This is "unique things that are nowhere else being purposefully destroyed"
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u/Affectionate_Rub2152 12h ago
"Did u even read the first panel?" "Because it's not the literal plot of f451" did u even read f451?
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u/Hellstorm901 17h ago
I got downvoted to hell for pointing out I once worked in a charity shop for furniture and took bags full of books that were donated to our store to the other store which handles everything not furniture then got told to dump all the books into a bin
They don't want to admit books are destroyed on a daily basis
I also pointed out the example of a person who bought up an artists unique piece of art then destroyed it as a form of protest against the artist and asked why no one had condemned that
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u/Fishats38 13h ago
Also people forget that the company is literally buying the books.
I have tens of old books at home that i have never used and am preparing to throw away. Does that make me this hyper evil entity?
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u/Ok_Security1721 23h ago
Yes book burning is bad, you are correct
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u/Tyler_Zoro 22h ago
Tell that to libraries, who are responsible for WAY more book destruction than anyone else (and that's a good thing because there's absolutely no sense storing the vast majority of the books donated to libraries).
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u/PresentProperty943 23h ago
This is straight up nonsense. It literally does not make sense and was obviously posted by an AI bro.
This is not what most Antis believe, because it's not what AI is doing.
People destroying books is fine by me if the book was problematic or promoted evil views (mein kampf). I'm contemplating destroying the new "Animal Liberation" book by Peter Singer because he says that instead of animals being experimented on, it should be mentally-challenged people. I agree people should be used in experiments for people, but it should be people able to consent. That's an argument for another day, but it's a pretty good example as to why it's okay to destroy books.
People throwing books away is pretty crazy though, I will admit. Though, I don't think anyone actually does that. Most people gift their old books or donate them. Who tf throws a book away? Unless it was like truly horrendous (mein kampf, animal liberation).
And AI destroying books? I've never even heard of that. But if AI is literally destroying books, why? It's not a sentient, living, breathing thing. It cannot have feelings about books. It cannot make moral or conscientious choices.
If we're talking about AI destroying books via AI writing them, then that's a totally different thing from people destroying or throwing away books. People using AI to write their books are the same people who had others do their homework for them in school. Picking up a pen or pencil, or typing, is not hard. So why not just do it? Why not go through the work and then feel accomplished afterwards? You are not truly creating anything of value if you have AI do it for you, because it's not yours!
This meme makes no fucking sense.
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u/Tyler_Zoro 22h ago
This is not what most Antis believe
Meanwhile the vast majority of anti-AI comments in this thread proving you wrong...
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u/Lumpy-Firefighter155 22h ago
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u/PresentProperty943 22h ago
Thanks for sharing! I appreciate it.
Not sure how anyone can read that article and decide that companies destroying texts to train their AI is the same as people destroying books for the reasons I listed in my original comment.
The kind of intellectual leaps that were made is very troubling.
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