genAI companies are now buying up rare and antique books so they can scan them and use them to train their AI. then they're destroying the books afterward.
AI companies are quietly obtaining rare books, ingesting their contents, and then destroying them -- even if they're exceedingly rare.
they've had to face settlements against stealing from current authors, so they'll just go for the old books now. they're also doing this so they have the only copies of rare books.
they're taking water, power, natural resources for their data centers. they steal. they're book burning, essentially. i'm just so angry, i'm at a loss right now.
From the article:
"One small book seller said that in April, he suddenly went from selling no more than 20 books a week to hundreds, and he’s almost certain that the customers are AI labs, noting the random selection of the books and how they all have ISBNs. He added that his inventory is full with rare and out of print books, meaning that an AI company could be destroying some of the few remaining copies that can be found.
“I personally have mixed feelings about all of this,” the bookseller told 404. “It benefits me financially as well as by clearing out old inventory that is otherwise unlikely to sell. I’ve been well-suited for these sales with inventory from overseas and foreign language books.
From a Google search:
PISBN allows publishers, retailers, and libraries to track and manage books more efficiently. Each ISBN corresponds to one specific edition of a publication, making it essential for smooth global circulation.
"But many companies, including Anthropic, have turned to ingesting physical books instead, which they can buy countless used copies of on the cheap. According to the settled lawsuit, Anthropic used a hydraulic powered cutting machine to neatly remove the pages from the books it procured from book resellers and then scanned them using industrial-grade imaging equipment. In other words, it was literally ripping off authors’ books to train its AI.
This process took advantage of a legal concept known as first-sale doctrine, which allows a buyer to do what they want with a purchase without the original copyright holder’s say-so. And since Anthropic was turning the original physical texts into digital ones — rather than redistributing them as new copies — a judge found this to be “transformative,” and therefore protected by fair use."
This is genuinely making me feel insane. I didn't work at a library, taking classes on learning how to fix books (so that they can continue to exist and continue being read and used), spending hours fixing books, carefully maintaining and cleaning books that have been read and used, just for people to tear them apart. And I'm sure as hell these rare book sellers didn't expect the same thing to become of the books they have spent time and effort procuring for their stores, so that collectors can continue to own, read, and use them. I don't spend my free time writing stories - pages upon fucking pages - for my and others' enjoyment, pouring my entire soul upon the fucking pages, just for some ridiculous "AI" company to scan it all into their bullshit machine. Why? Why are they doing this? For profit? For control?
Kiss my ass.
