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Read more about this. Depends on the definition of the "big deal" but from what I can understand the problem is that they buy rare things - which exist in just

Read more about this. Depends on the definition of the "big deal" but from what I can understand the problem is that they buy rare things - which exist in just several copies - and they tend to buy _all_ copies.

dataflow 2mo ago
Where did you see they tend to buy all the copies? This comment is the first time I've heard of this.
- wmeredith 2mo ago
  I'd also be curious about the provenance of that statement. Why would they buy all copies? What would be the purpose of scanning multiple copies?
  - dataflow 2mo ago
    I could see buying multiple copies being useful to mitigate problems, like damage. But buying all the copies is categorically different and I cannot imagine why they would attempt that, except perhaps to prevent their competition from getting a hold of the same text?
- p-e-w 2mo ago
  It’s just another lie of the type these threads tend to be filled with nowadays. Of course they aren’t buying “all copies”, and that wouldn’t even be possible in most cases since such books are usually flea market/attic material and most copies aren’t for sale (or even catalogued) to begin with. I’d be interested to learn who comes up with such lies though. Is it really just random people venting their frustration, or some kind of organized astroturfing operation?
  - diseasedyak 2mo ago
    It really does seem like an organized operation, given that it's so prevalent and they all seem to be in lockstep with their specious claims.
    - wongarsu 2mo ago
      I wouldn't be surprised to find out that this outrage is fueled by the same actors as the AI data center water outrage. Whoever they are
  - vavos 2mo ago
    I think these type of lies usually come about as a result of a game of broken telephone and things get exaggerated
sajithdilshan 2mo ago
what is your source?
mistercow 2mo ago
Most old books that are rare and unpreserved are so because their value is marginal, so nobody has bothered to collect and preserve them. But where did you hear that they’re buying “all copies”? And to what end?
- dbspin 2mo ago
  This is a classic mistake. We have no way of estimating the future value of a given book. It's perceived current value (a large part of which is simply obscurity) may be low. But it's future value - to historians, ethnographers, to researchers seeking a specific fact or example of language use or a hundred other things - is literally inestimable. To take a crude example in a different medium - new york in the 90s - widely documented right? Yet, if you want to find high definition video of street life in a given burrough on a given day or year, you're faced with an enormously difficult task. There were some HD test videos done in Manhattan in the late 90s (which have been posted to Hackernews before), but there's no equivalent for the other burroughs. Your best best would be finding original negative out takes or location scouting footage from feature films, a very hard task. That's only 30 years ago. Outside of the focal points of the worlds attention - English language, rich countries, places in the news, contemporaneous sources for 'non notable' events (lifestyle, how people spoke dressed etc) is surprisingly poorly preserved. Hopefully you can infer how this tracks to the written world and primary sources for language, technical manuals etc etc.
  - famouswaffles 2mo ago
    >Hopefully you can infer how this tracks to the written world and primary sources for language, technical manuals etc etc. I honestly can't and I think you can't either or you would have used an example with books/printed media rather than film, an entirely different ballgame.
    - dbspin 2mo ago
      OK... I'm going to assume good faith even though your wording makes it somewhat unlikely. Similar textual examples would be any text containing actual language as it's spoken in a given place or time. Or any factual textbook detailing the buildings present in a given location. Or any text book detailing a now defunct construction process. Or any text book (generally small run) detailing a niche interest, now missing ecosystem or the state of a particular political situation at a given time. Essentially all textual primary sources for events which are not currently considered important - but which we have no way of estimating the future importance of. One can continue to create countless counterfactual examples in this vein. My overall point is we cannot know what may be useful or even essential in the future, and knowledge should be preserved under the assumption that it is likely to be. Historians frequently refer to this paradox - how everyday aspects of life are frequently not explicitly documented, since they're so obvious to the communities or communities of expertise that observe and carry them out. So it's actually incredibly important to preserve what seems like ephemera. Hell we couldn't have AI training at all if we lacked the corpus of existing written literature - but there was no way any author could have anticipated this future utility more than a couple of decades ago.
pfdietz 2mo ago
Here we have another entry in the long list of "things described on the Internet that never happened".
wasmperson 2mo ago
I was also skeptical of this claim but managed to find someone who explains it: https://downtownbrown.substack.com/p/five-fallacies-ai-and-destructive-scanning-of-books https://downtownbrown.substack.com/p/five-fallacies-ai-and-d... It's not that individual companies buy all copies of a given book, but that there's more than one book scanning company, and they aren't sharing the scans with each other. The result: books that were rare but nevertheless easy to find for purchase (thanks to the internet) are now vanishing off of the market, becoming de facto no longer accessible to the public.
- quietsegfault 2mo ago
  [dead]
- demibabs 2mo ago
  Good article, but I still feel unsatisfied because even it cannot find an example of a book that’s actually been lost because of the destructive scanning frenzy (it only lists books that hypothetically could be lost because there’s not many physical copies available for sale online.). If anyone has an example, I’d love to hear it.
  - voidhorse 2mo ago
    Since we don't know what was actually purchased and what was actually destroyed, how do you expect us to furnish an example? This would require the destroyers to admit it, and beyond that it would require all of them to admit it since more than one of them might have been responsible for the extinction of one text. Seeing as they were already keeping this operation under wraps, I don't see that happening. "possibly extinct because no copies available online" is probably the best we can do. The distributed nature of the problem and the utter lack of transparency are huge factors here too.
    - demibabs 1mo ago
      These companies are buying from small book stores; surely these collector types would know if they lost any one-of-a-kinds? Or at least someone would be keeping track of extremely rare books disappearing (especially now since this matter has been public for weeks). Regardless I feel like they gotta figure this out for optics reasons. “So and so books are lost forever to Anthropic’s servers” is much more outrageous than “Anthropic is destroying a bunch of books that have other copies” imo.

dataflow 2mo ago

Where did you see they tend to buy all the copies? This comment is the first time I've heard of this.

wmeredith 2mo ago
I'd also be curious about the provenance of that statement. Why would they buy all copies? What would be the purpose of scanning multiple copies?
- dataflow 2mo ago
  I could see buying multiple copies being useful to mitigate problems, like damage. But buying all the copies is categorically different and I cannot imagine why they would attempt that, except perhaps to prevent their competition from getting a hold of the same text?
p-e-w 2mo ago
It’s just another lie of the type these threads tend to be filled with nowadays. Of course they aren’t buying “all copies”, and that wouldn’t even be possible in most cases since such books are usually flea market/attic material and most copies aren’t for sale (or even catalogued) to begin with. I’d be interested to learn who comes up with such lies though. Is it really just random people venting their frustration, or some kind of organized astroturfing operation?
- diseasedyak 2mo ago
  It really does seem like an organized operation, given that it's so prevalent and they all seem to be in lockstep with their specious claims.
  - wongarsu 2mo ago
    I wouldn't be surprised to find out that this outrage is fueled by the same actors as the AI data center water outrage. Whoever they are
- vavos 2mo ago
  I think these type of lies usually come about as a result of a game of broken telephone and things get exaggerated

sajithdilshan 2mo ago

what is your source?

mistercow 2mo ago

Most old books that are rare and unpreserved are so because their value is marginal, so nobody has bothered to collect and preserve them. But where did you hear that they’re buying “all copies”? And to what end?

dbspin 2mo ago
This is a classic mistake. We have no way of estimating the future value of a given book. It's perceived current value (a large part of which is simply obscurity) may be low. But it's future value - to historians, ethnographers, to researchers seeking a specific fact or example of language use or a hundred other things - is literally inestimable. To take a crude example in a different medium - new york in the 90s - widely documented right? Yet, if you want to find high definition video of street life in a given burrough on a given day or year, you're faced with an enormously difficult task. There were some HD test videos done in Manhattan in the late 90s (which have been posted to Hackernews before), but there's no equivalent for the other burroughs. Your best best would be finding original negative out takes or location scouting footage from feature films, a very hard task. That's only 30 years ago. Outside of the focal points of the worlds attention - English language, rich countries, places in the news, contemporaneous sources for 'non notable' events (lifestyle, how people spoke dressed etc) is surprisingly poorly preserved. Hopefully you can infer how this tracks to the written world and primary sources for language, technical manuals etc etc.
- famouswaffles 2mo ago
  >Hopefully you can infer how this tracks to the written world and primary sources for language, technical manuals etc etc. I honestly can't and I think you can't either or you would have used an example with books/printed media rather than film, an entirely different ballgame.
  - dbspin 2mo ago
    OK... I'm going to assume good faith even though your wording makes it somewhat unlikely. Similar textual examples would be any text containing actual language as it's spoken in a given place or time. Or any factual textbook detailing the buildings present in a given location. Or any text book detailing a now defunct construction process. Or any text book (generally small run) detailing a niche interest, now missing ecosystem or the state of a particular political situation at a given time. Essentially all textual primary sources for events which are not currently considered important - but which we have no way of estimating the future importance of. One can continue to create countless counterfactual examples in this vein. My overall point is we cannot know what may be useful or even essential in the future, and knowledge should be preserved under the assumption that it is likely to be. Historians frequently refer to this paradox - how everyday aspects of life are frequently not explicitly documented, since they're so obvious to the communities or communities of expertise that observe and carry them out. So it's actually incredibly important to preserve what seems like ephemera. Hell we couldn't have AI training at all if we lacked the corpus of existing written literature - but there was no way any author could have anticipated this future utility more than a couple of decades ago.

pfdietz 2mo ago

Here we have another entry in the long list of "things described on the Internet that never happened".

wasmperson 2mo ago

I was also skeptical of this claim but managed to find someone who explains it: https://downtownbrown.substack.com/p/five-fallacies-ai-and-destructive-scanning-of-books https://downtownbrown.substack.com/p/five-fallacies-ai-and-d... It's not that individual companies buy all copies of a given book, but that there's more than one book scanning company, and they aren't sharing the scans with each other. The result: books that were rare but nevertheless easy to find for purchase (thanks to the internet) are now vanishing off of the market, becoming de facto no longer accessible to the public.

quietsegfault 2mo ago
[dead]
demibabs 2mo ago
Good article, but I still feel unsatisfied because even it cannot find an example of a book that’s actually been lost because of the destructive scanning frenzy (it only lists books that hypothetically could be lost because there’s not many physical copies available for sale online.). If anyone has an example, I’d love to hear it.
- voidhorse 2mo ago
  Since we don't know what was actually purchased and what was actually destroyed, how do you expect us to furnish an example? This would require the destroyers to admit it, and beyond that it would require all of them to admit it since more than one of them might have been responsible for the extinction of one text. Seeing as they were already keeping this operation under wraps, I don't see that happening. "possibly extinct because no copies available online" is probably the best we can do. The distributed nature of the problem and the utter lack of transparency are huge factors here too.
  - demibabs 1mo ago
    These companies are buying from small book stores; surely these collector types would know if they lost any one-of-a-kinds? Or at least someone would be keeping track of extremely rare books disappearing (especially now since this matter has been public for weeks). Regardless I feel like they gotta figure this out for optics reasons. “So and so books are lost forever to Anthropic’s servers” is much more outrageous than “Anthropic is destroying a bunch of books that have other copies” imo.