AI labs buy, scan, shred millions of rare books (www.news.com.au)

submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/technology@lemmy.ml

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Artificial intelligence labs are in a new arms race to buy up millions of rare books, slicing them open, scanning the pages and pulping the remains — sparking concerns that the last remaining copies of out-of-print texts are being destroyed on an industrial scale.

ISBNdb notes that “print books from the pre-LLM era are structurally guaranteed to be free of this contamination”.

“Millions of the most valuable books have never been digitised. They exist only in physical form, scattered across library shelves, used bookstores, and out-of-print catalogues. We get them to you at scale.”

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[-] arran4@aussie.zone 3 points 3 days ago

IIRC this is very much created by the way copyright law works. So this is the company acting on incentives. It needs regulatory adjustment. If you stop them from THIS method they might find an even more destructive path. Make it so their actions create positive 2nd order effects.

[-] burlemarx@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Regulating is useless, if it can't be enforced. And why the representatives will create any regulations at all if they are in the pocket of the billionaires who run those companies?

this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2026

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