AirTag reveals Amazon is trashing rare books to train AI

Half the reason the books get trashed in this process is because the first sale doctrine keeps copyright from strangling all the freedom in this narrow area.

It seems a little short-sighted to destroy an artifact to get the text.

Perhaps the genetic material that remains in books from the people who handled them, or the pollen from plants in the environment that the book existed in will have value in the future, but we won't know what we lost because some people foolishly destroyed it in a bizarre quest to make AGI that the creators argue could potentially destroy humanity.

The more and more I read about these kinds of people the more I'm starting to realize that they're in the "here for a good time not a long time" group of people and those are the last people you want making long-term decisions.

It's all interesting for something, even if it's just a meta analysis of culture during a certain period or what kind of trashy romance novels were popular in 198X. At least in my view.

Yes, and when you buy them with that designation, you know what you're getting into. The problem occurs when you already own it, and some group is trying to get it labeled as historic, which will add to your burden and limit what you can do with it.

When I was in a small town, this was actually weaponized. A hotel owner was trying to get another hotel categorized as "historic" and had rallied a lot of people behind his cause. He had a case - the hotel did have some claim to being the "first" in some category or other. But really, he was doing it because it was a competitor. The "historic" hotel owner had to spend a lot of money to fight the cause, because being labeled historic would prevent him from performing various upgrades, making the hotel less attractive to customers (he was already not getting many customers).

Sample:

> Thou shalt commit adultery.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_Bible

They raise the price and print more copies?

Because for the vast majority of the books, Google doesn't have the legal right to license those scans. It would be legal if the books were out of copyright, but despite the connotation of "rare books" those generally aren't the books we're talking about. Further, in the cases where Google didn't destroy the original of the book they scanned, their scanned copy may be considered infringing under the new standard, so Google doesn't want call undue attention to what they have.

https://nitter.net/internetarchive/status/135809098218971955...

  6 Feb 2021

  At the Internet Archive, this is how we digitize a book. 

  We never destroy a book by cutting off its binding. Instead, we digitize it the hard way--one page at a time.

It was a distinction between library books and others. They partnered with libraries, and obviously, libraries didn't want their books destroyed, so they devised a non-destructive book scanner. Some of the books they scanned were indeed rare, but rare or not, you don't destroy books you borrowed from a library!

That sounds really speculative, and not inevitable at all.

I think you're just trying to invent things to be worried about because you don't like AI and don't trust AI companies.

“And, the digitization of the books purchased in print form by Anthropic was also a fair use but not for the same reason as applies to the training copies. Instead, it was a fair use because all Anthropic did was replace the print copies it had purchased for its central library with more convenient space-saving and searchable digital copies for its central library — without adding new copies, creating new works, or redistributing existing copies.”

I’m not a lawyer, so it’s possible I’m missing something. But it seems to me like the ruling here implies fair use only holds so long as no net new copies, digital or otherwise, are created. If that’s the case, then it necessitates the destruction of the original.

If AI-scanners are somehow bid-sniping bona fide collectors and wealthy aficionados, there may be cause for concern. But that is most certainly not happening here.