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I mean, they could have gotten e-book versions of the books, or even preprint PDFs. In an era where people are starting to calculate the environmental impact o

I mean, they could have gotten e-book versions of the books, or even preprint PDFs. In an era where people are starting to calculate the environmental impact of the jobs they run on the cloud and start to optimize it, adding that much load on recycling system is not a wise choice, but only a selfish one.

ThrowawayR2 1y ago
I'm sure they would have loved to save the hassle and expense of disassembling physical books. Presumably something legal related or cost related prevented them from going that route.
- JohnFen 1y ago
  Yes, they did it as a workaround for copyright. TFA explains that aspect.
  - rpdillon 1y ago
    It's not a workaround for copyright. It's to obey copyright. As in: copyright law is the reason they destroyed the books. Meta didn't have to do any of this. They just used The Pile.
AlotOfReading 1y ago
I strongly suspect that dealing with ebooks on this scale might actually be even more onerous than the physical volumes. The physical stuff is straightforward. Buy books from bulk sellers, rip off everything and put them into off-the-self rigs for digitization. It's straightforward, directly scalable, can use any book, and your main issue is format shifting, which anthropic successfully argued here. No DRM, you buy exactly the books you need, and every book is processed exactly the same way. If you try to buy ebooks, you get wrapped up in onerous licensing terms about copying, and how you're able to use them, how long you're able to access them, and so on. Many books won't even be available (or can only be licensed alongside a bunch of others) and you have to deal with DRM you can't strip without creating additional copyright issues. We've somehow created a world where physical objects are more free than bits.
rpdillon 1y ago
No, they probably couldn't have. eBooks are notoriously DRMed and the DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent an effective copy protection mechanism even if you otherwise have legal access to work. Furthermore, first sale doctrine doesn't apply to any digital files and they can't be obtained legally in bulk.

ThrowawayR2 1y ago

I'm sure they would have loved to save the hassle and expense of disassembling physical books. Presumably something legal related or cost related prevented them from going that route.

JohnFen 1y ago
Yes, they did it as a workaround for copyright. TFA explains that aspect.
- rpdillon 1y ago
  It's not a workaround for copyright. It's to obey copyright. As in: copyright law is the reason they destroyed the books. Meta didn't have to do any of this. They just used The Pile.

AlotOfReading 1y ago

I strongly suspect that dealing with ebooks on this scale might actually be even more onerous than the physical volumes. The physical stuff is straightforward. Buy books from bulk sellers, rip off everything and put them into off-the-self rigs for digitization. It's straightforward, directly scalable, can use any book, and your main issue is format shifting, which anthropic successfully argued here. No DRM, you buy exactly the books you need, and every book is processed exactly the same way. If you try to buy ebooks, you get wrapped up in onerous licensing terms about copying, and how you're able to use them, how long you're able to access them, and so on. Many books won't even be available (or can only be licensed alongside a bunch of others) and you have to deal with DRM you can't strip without creating additional copyright issues. We've somehow created a world where physical objects are more free than bits.

rpdillon 1y ago

No, they probably couldn't have. eBooks are notoriously DRMed and the DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent an effective copy protection mechanism even if you otherwise have legal access to work. Furthermore, first sale doctrine doesn't apply to any digital files and they can't be obtained legally in bulk.