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I don't even think ownership rights are the principal component of this situation. It's true that in a different copyright regime, Anthropic could simply publis

by tptacek 2mo ago

I don't even think ownership rights are the principal component of this situation. It's true that in a different copyright regime, Anthropic could simply publish an archive of every book they scanned (and I think they likely would do that, if they could). But the primary reason these books get destroyed is that nobody cares about them. Old, rare books are a garbage disposal problem, not a cultural one. To me the most important thing to know about this story is that the AI companies are a tiny, tiny blip in the big picture of what happens to old physical books. Everybody imagines libraries hoping against hope to get their hands on all these rare books so they can shelve them and preserve them for generations to come. But if you donate a box of old books to a public library, there's a good chance the clerical staff handling that donation is going to roll its eyes and cart the books out to a dumpster. Large public library systems have stopped taking book donations, for this reason. "Bring them to a thrift store" is what they'll tell you.

etdznots 2mo ago
Yes, and this justifies the destruction of books on an industrial scale. I propose next we do children, ever tried dropping off an innocent child at a supermarket before? There’s a good chance they’ll just send them out into the streets!
- tptacek 2mo ago
  If you weren't complaining about libraries doing it last year, I'm going to have a very hard time taking you seriously when you complain about AI companies doing it at a much smaller scale. You don't care about what's actually being done, you just care about who's doing it. The argument wouldn't hold even if you had been on the library's case, because it misconstrues the normal lifecycle of a book. But we don't even get there unless you've been consistent about this, rather than instrumentalizing it at just this precise moment to jump on a trend story about hating AI.

by tptacek 2mo ago

etdznots 2mo ago

Yes, and this justifies the destruction of books on an industrial scale. I propose next we do children, ever tried dropping off an innocent child at a supermarket before? There’s a good chance they’ll just send them out into the streets!

tptacek 2mo ago
If you weren't complaining about libraries doing it last year, I'm going to have a very hard time taking you seriously when you complain about AI companies doing it at a much smaller scale. You don't care about what's actually being done, you just care about who's doing it. The argument wouldn't hold even if you had been on the library's case, because it misconstrues the normal lifecycle of a book. But we don't even get there unless you've been consistent about this, rather than instrumentalizing it at just this precise moment to jump on a trend story about hating AI.