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It’s ugly. When there are still only some copies available of a certain book and they are all being sold the knowledge is gone. Let alone when it’s the only cop
by lucfranken 2mo ago
It’s ugly. When there are still only some copies available of a certain book and they are all being sold the knowledge is gone. Let alone when it’s the only copy remaining.
That is of course not totally true, the copies are in private digital stores.
But for general public the knowledge is gone. Someone researching let’s say the history of a little village won’t be able to catch it.
This happens as well in current private collections. The physical book gets stored in a private book collection. But many also get out by the years when people are moving or die.
The amount of companies doing this is the real harm. There will be many companies running this process. It is absolutely not comparable to a single book collection getting burned in a house fire or being thrown away instead of donated to a second hand store.
It might feel for some as a not really big issue but actually it is in time.
- readthenotes1 2mo agoThey got in trouble for violating copyright so now they are somewhat spitefully showing the alternative
- lucfranken 2mo agoYes, that's a horrible way of applying the rules. Sometimes things are done according the rules but the outcome is terrible.
- x______________ 2mo agoRules don't... sorry, cannot apply for both people and corporations with endless bankrolls. That is not a realistic approach. What's stopping say next year's billion or trillion dollar company from going into x market for used y, or vacuums up z limited natural resource? Should people have to suffer for the whims of a board of directors?
- johnsmith1840 2mo agoThey are digitally scanning them? What knowledge is being lost here?
- abyssin 2mo agoThe knowledge that was available to the public.
- johnsmith1840 2mo agoThey weren't public?
- AlecSchueler 2mo agoIf you take the only remaining copy of book X and take it home to digitally scan it, then destroy the book and never share the scan, what has been lost?
- johnsmith1840 2mo agoNothing? What's the difference of the vast rare books in private collections never scanned or public? Ever been to the rare book conference? None of those are public.
- AlecSchueler 2mo ago> What's the difference of the vast rare books in private collections There's little difference and I would suggest there's a pity in knowledge being hoarded by collectors. If we were getting into the differences, though, it would be that is now happening en masse in order for a handful of corporations to monopolise knowledge, history and ideas from books that were until recently available somewhere to the public. I also doubt that many collectors are buying rare books with the intention of destroying them.
- lucfranken 2mo agoThey won't destroy the books very likely but also the amount of capacity and money to do this on a huge scale is (as far as I know) totally unprecedented. And it's irreversible when the books are really destroyed. That combination makes it an urgent and important issue.