Cause to easily scan them they remove the binding and rebinding is more work %han destroyibg so the point is capitalism

Have you ever tried scanning a book? It's a huge PITA.

They just cut the binding off so they can be run through a document feeder.

To keep their competitors from buying them and scanning them.

Easier to scan if you cut the binding off, and it costs money to re-bind a book you purchased for 10 cents as part of a lot.

Do make sure that knowledge is only available through their model and otherwise lost to humanity.

Same with bombarding small websites until they give up and pull the plug.

Everything is fucked

Copyright. They mustn't make a copy. There is legal precedent that confirms it's okay to transform the copy you bought into digital format. The Internet Archive relies a lot on that. I think they actually litigated it in the first place. So that's why the copyright heads are going so absolutely apeshit. If no one's charging you rent for using some data, then it's "unethical".

Fair use loophole, they claim they convert one physical book into one digital with no illicit copies, while also supporting the delusion of AI being an equivalent to a human reader. It is weird on so many levels but no one of noticeable weight asked them wtf.

I mean have you tried donating books? They just dump them into a storage room with thousands of other books donated that nobody wants.

They're pissing in the well so their competitors can't access the same information.

you snip off the book and scan the binding

To avoid competitors also scanning the book to get some kind of edge.