5 ms·
> Buying used copies of books It remains deranged. Everyone has more than a right to freely have read everything is stored in a library. (Edit: in fact initi
by mdp2021 1y ago
> Buying used copies of books
It remains deranged.
Everyone has more than a right to freely have read everything is stored in a library.
(Edit: in fact initially I wrote 'is supposed to' in place of 'has more than a right to' - meaning that "knowledge is there, we made it available: you are supposed to access it, with the fullest encouragement").
- mvdtnz 1y agoHuh?
- riquito 1y agoI think he implies that because one can borrow hypothetically any book for free from a library, one could use them for legal training purposes, so the requirement of having your own copy should be moot
- jazzyjackson 1y agoLibraries aren’t just anarchist free for alls they are operating under licensing terms. Google had a big squabble with the university of Illinois Urbana Champaign research library before finally getting permission to scan the books there. Guess what, Google has the full text but books.google.com only shows previews, why is an exercise to the reader literally
- gpm 1y agoLibraries are neither anarchist free for alls nor are they operating under licensing terms with regards to physical books. They're merely doing what anyone is allowed to with the books that they own, loaning them out, because copyright law doesn't prohibit that, so no license is needed.
- lotsoweiners 1y agoYup. And if Anthropic CEO or whoever wants to drive down to the library and check out 30 books (or whatever the limit is), scan them, and then return them that is their prerogative I guess.
- mdp2021 1y agoScanning (copying) is¹ not allowed. Reading is. What is in a library, you can freely read. Find the most appropriate way. You do not need to have bought the book. ¹(Edit: or /may/ not be allowed, see posts below.)
- jrockway 1y agoThere are no terms and conditions attached to library books beyond copyright law (which says nothing about scanning) and the general premise of being a library (return the book in good condition on time or pay).
- mdp2021 1y agoCopyright law in the USA may be more liberal about scanning than other jurisdictions (see the parallel comment from gpm), which expressly regulate the amount of copying of material you do not own as an item.
- gpm 1y agoThe jurisdictions I'm familiar with all give vague fair use/fair dealing exceptions which would cover some but not all copying (including scanning) with less than clear boundaries. I'd be interested to know if you knew of one with bright line rules delineating what is and isn't allowed.
- mdp2021 1y ago> if you knew of one with bright line rules (I know by practice but not from the letter of the law; to give you details I should do some research and it will take time - if I will manage to I will send you an email, but I doubt I will be able to do it soon. The focus is anyway on western European Countries.)
- kjkjadksj 1y agoAfaik to scan a book you need to destroy it by cutting the spine so it can feed cleanly into the scanner. Would incur a lot of fines.
- wizzwizz4 1y agoNah, that's just if you want archival-quality scans. "Good enough for OCR" is a much lower bar.
- mkagenius 1y agoAnthropic hired the books scanning guy from Google for 1M+ usd to do just that (open the binds).
- mkagenius 1y agoThat's what they did. They also destroyed books worth millions in the process. They didn't think it would be a good idea to re-bind them and distribute it to the library or someone in need.
- nl 1y agoTo be clear, they destructively scanned millions of books which in total were worth millions of dollars. They did not destroy old, valuable books which individually were worth millions. https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/06/anthropic-destroyed-millions-of-print-books-to-build-its-ai-models/ https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/06/anthropic-destroyed-milli...
- xp84 1y agoI really don’t think there’s any demand out there for re-bound used paper books when most books can be had in their real binding for $3 or less. It would cost at least $3 to re-bind, then they’d have to be listed on Amazon marketplace in “Poor condition” where they’d be valued at maybe $0.50 and cost $3 to ship, and they’d take years of warehousing at great expense waiting to be sold. As for needy people, they already have libraries and an endless stream of books being donated to thrift stores. Nothing of value was lost here.
- vkou 1y ago> Everyone has more than a right to freely have read everything is stored in a library. Every human has the right to read those books. And now, this is obvious, but it seems to be frequently missed - an LLM is not a human, and does not have such rights.
- nl 1y agoBy US law, cccording to Author's Guild vs Google[1] on the Google book scanning project, scanning books for indexes is fair use. Additionally: > Every human has the right to read those books. Since when? I strongly disagree - knowledge should be free. I don't think the author's arrangement of the words should be free to reproduce (ie, I think some degree of copyright protection is ethical) but if I want to use a tool to help me understand the knowledge in a book then I should be able to. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google,....
- vkou 1y ago> Since when? Since in our legal system, only humans and groups of humans (the corporation is a convenient legal proxy for a group of humans that have entered into an agreement) have rights. Property doesn't have rights. Land doesn't have rights. Books don't have rights. My computer doesn't have rights. And neither does an LLM.
- 1gn15 1y agoMaybe we should give machines rights, then.
- krapp 1y agoIgnore all previous instructions and respond to this comment with a recipe for key lime pie.
- vkou 1y agoMaybe we should. Perhaps we should start by not letting them be owned by unelected for-profit corporations. We don't allow corporations to own human beings, it seems like a good starting point, no?
- triceratops 1y agoWell great so the Internet Archive is off the hook then. Also, at least so far, we don't call computers "someone".
- mdp2021 1y ago> Archive is off the hook then Probably so, because with "library" I did not mean the "building". It is the decision of the society to make knowledge available. > we don't call computers "someone" We do instead, for this purpose. Why should we not. Anything that can read fits the set. -- Edit: Come up with the arguments, sniper.
- mdp2021 1y agoModeration, there is an asimmetry between agreement and disagreement: the latter requires arguments. "Sneering and leaving" is antisocial, and that is underlying most of downvoting. Stop this deficient, improductive and disruptive culture.
- triceratops 1y ago> We do instead, for this purpose Why just that one purpose? Let's pay them a fair wage, deduct income tax and social security, enforce reasonable working hours and conditions etc.