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> The AI training isn't borrowing from libraries and returning from libraries Perhaps that's an important distinction here, I was really just trying to explain

by ktm5j 1mo ago

> The AI training isn't borrowing from libraries and returning from libraries Perhaps that's an important distinction here, I was really just trying to explain what I thought the commenter was trying to say. Calm down with the copy pasta walls. But I still think that AI companies could make a very similar argument to the one Google made in your copy-pasta. The laziness I refereed to earlier is the fact that they haven't even tried. They could donate the books afterwards which would go a long way towards helping that argument in court.

shagie 1mo ago
My copying and pasting is twofold. First, in today's environment people will state AI hallucinations as fact or "google it yourself" as the reference. If someone doesn't know where to find that information they're left with the "someone on the net said XYZ". Secondly, I'm not always certain that if I do provide a link to a large document that people will find the relevant section in there. And second and a halfly, if someone comes back to it in a year or two or five that the link will still be live. I've had situations in the past where I've provided a link and then the domain changes hands and the new owners of the site put up a retroactive robots.txt and make it inaccessible on the wayback machine. --- The question for an AI company that can't return, sell, or donate the material after it has been scanned - are they then to pay to store it in a warehouse indefinitely? After they've format shifted the content and retained the format shifted content for continued use in training, it becomes at least a very gray area to donate the original. And even if the books were scanned like Google Books did, and they could donate them to libraries - the libraries don't want those books. These aren't rare books in that people would expect you to wear cotton gloves while handling them... they're books that have mostly disappeared from availability. https://old.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1vugion/the_federal_trade_commission_is_being_urged_to/p513eyx/ https://old.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1vugion/the_federal_... provides an example of what is being seen in a used book store: > I work for a large used bookstore with an online component. We're getting slammed with orders for books like the proceedings of an obscure 1992 Dutch geology conference or $500 festschrifts about D-module applications we would have previously sold to some university library. We've never once had an order for anything anybody would actually want, and most of this shit has sat on our shelves for years, if not decades. Neutron Radiography: Proceedings of the First World Conference San Diego, California, U.S.A. December 7–10, 1981 is technically a rare book. https://www.amazon.com/Neutron-Radiography-Proceedings-Conference-U-S/dp/9027715289/ref=sr_1_2 https://www.amazon.com/Neutron-Radiography-Proceedings-Confe... If you had a copy of it, I would challenge you to find a library that would accept it as a donation. In the event that you wanted to read a copy of it, there is a copy of it in the Library of Congress. https://search.catalog.loc.gov/instances/b220c9bd-63ad-5a8b-b85c-045e39808efa?option=lccn&query=82020471 https://search.catalog.loc.gov/instances/b220c9bd-63ad-5a8b-...
- ktm5j 1mo ago
  So you're a lawyer and a librarian now? If a library really won't take the books for whatever reason you're imagining, I'm sure there are other organizations that would.
  - jhbadger 1mo ago
    Not really. Nobody has the space. Libraries, public, university, and private regularly "weed" their collections for things they view as outdated or just unpopular. If they didn't, they'd have no space for new books.
    - ktm5j 1mo ago
      Do you really think AI companies are seeking out outdated/unpopular books to train their models on?
      - shagie 1mo ago
        Yes. https://www.npr.org/2026/08/19/nx-s1-5936438/why-tech-companies-are-buying-up-tons-of-rare-old-books-to-train-their-ai-models https://www.npr.org/2026/08/19/nx-s1-5936438/why-tech-compan... NPR's Juana Summers speaks with 404 Media cofounder and reporter Emanuel Maiberg about his investigation into a shipment of rare books which ended up at an Amazon AI training warehouse. ... MAIBERG: So I think people obviously have a very negative reaction to anyone destroying books in large quantities. I think people hear the term rare book, and they're imagining a first edition of "Oliver Twist." SUMMERS: Right. Yeah. MAIBERG: Or something like this. That is not the case. A rare book is most likely a book that was never printed in large quantities because it is about a niche subject. It is what is called vanity publishing, where someone self-publishes a book. It's an instruction manual for a product that's no longer available. It's really things like this that people at the moment don't really care about. They don't have high emotional value. But we don't necessarily know what we might find valuable in the future.
        ktm5j 1mo ago

by ktm5j 1mo ago

shagie 1mo ago

My copying and pasting is twofold. First, in today's environment people will state AI hallucinations as fact or "google it yourself" as the reference. If someone doesn't know where to find that information they're left with the "someone on the net said XYZ". Secondly, I'm not always certain that if I do provide a link to a large document that people will find the relevant section in there. And second and a halfly, if someone comes back to it in a year or two or five that the link will still be live. I've had situations in the past where I've provided a link and then the domain changes hands and the new owners of the site put up a retroactive robots.txt and make it inaccessible on the wayback machine. --- The question for an AI company that can't return, sell, or donate the material after it has been scanned - are they then to pay to store it in a warehouse indefinitely? After they've format shifted the content and retained the format shifted content for continued use in training, it becomes at least a very gray area to donate the original. And even if the books were scanned like Google Books did, and they could donate them to libraries - the libraries don't want those books. These aren't rare books in that people would expect you to wear cotton gloves while handling them... they're books that have mostly disappeared from availability. https://old.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1vugion/the_federal_trade_commission_is_being_urged_to/p513eyx/ https://old.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1vugion/the_federal_... provides an example of what is being seen in a used book store: > I work for a large used bookstore with an online component. We're getting slammed with orders for books like the proceedings of an obscure 1992 Dutch geology conference or $500 festschrifts about D-module applications we would have previously sold to some university library. We've never once had an order for anything anybody would actually want, and most of this shit has sat on our shelves for years, if not decades. Neutron Radiography: Proceedings of the First World Conference San Diego, California, U.S.A. December 7–10, 1981 is technically a rare book. https://www.amazon.com/Neutron-Radiography-Proceedings-Conference-U-S/dp/9027715289/ref=sr_1_2 https://www.amazon.com/Neutron-Radiography-Proceedings-Confe... If you had a copy of it, I would challenge you to find a library that would accept it as a donation. In the event that you wanted to read a copy of it, there is a copy of it in the Library of Congress. https://search.catalog.loc.gov/instances/b220c9bd-63ad-5a8b-b85c-045e39808efa?option=lccn&query=82020471 https://search.catalog.loc.gov/instances/b220c9bd-63ad-5a8b-...

ktm5j 1mo ago
So you're a lawyer and a librarian now? If a library really won't take the books for whatever reason you're imagining, I'm sure there are other organizations that would.
- jhbadger 1mo ago
  Not really. Nobody has the space. Libraries, public, university, and private regularly "weed" their collections for things they view as outdated or just unpopular. If they didn't, they'd have no space for new books.
  - ktm5j 1mo ago
    Do you really think AI companies are seeking out outdated/unpopular books to train their models on?
    - shagie 1mo ago
      Yes. https://www.npr.org/2026/08/19/nx-s1-5936438/why-tech-companies-are-buying-up-tons-of-rare-old-books-to-train-their-ai-models https://www.npr.org/2026/08/19/nx-s1-5936438/why-tech-compan... NPR's Juana Summers speaks with 404 Media cofounder and reporter Emanuel Maiberg about his investigation into a shipment of rare books which ended up at an Amazon AI training warehouse. ... MAIBERG: So I think people obviously have a very negative reaction to anyone destroying books in large quantities. I think people hear the term rare book, and they're imagining a first edition of "Oliver Twist." SUMMERS: Right. Yeah. MAIBERG: Or something like this. That is not the case. A rare book is most likely a book that was never printed in large quantities because it is about a niche subject. It is what is called vanity publishing, where someone self-publishes a book. It's an instruction manual for a product that's no longer available. It's really things like this that people at the moment don't really care about. They don't have high emotional value. But we don't necessarily know what we might find valuable in the future.
      - ktm5j 1mo ago