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- Hacker News
- Isn't this the legal requirement for digitizing books usually? I dont like that its being done, but I feel the direction of anger for this one is misplaced. Or at least partially misplaced.by xboxnolifes
- Yes part of the legal defense used to good effect is that they are copying one for one (not really making a copy but rather converting it). I agree with many in this thread that copyright reform is the best solution here. Shorter copyrights. Lose copyright if you stop using it (printing it), more clear digitization and preservation guidelines.by mchusma
- From what I understand, the rare books in question are not some historically relevant medieval manuscripts, but rather some relatively recent books (still under copyright) for which there are few print copies available for purchase.
I am not sure that physically destructing one copy of this type of book to preserve its contents digitally is so bad. Pretty much anything that is still under copyright should be valuable only for its content, not for the physical medium it's printed on.
by pu_pe - Is slightly modifying some weights in a markov chain somewhere really preserving it's contents?by godshatter
- This works only if the digital copy is made publically available. I actually agree with destructively scanning a copy of a work that is in single digits as long as that excellent digital scan is made available.by qingcharles
- "To preserve them digitally"
For whom? is the relevant question
by lejalv - > historically relevant medieval manuscripts,
These are increasingly available online, btw. Historical research is accelerated when historians have direct access to scans of relevant source material. Not destructively scanned, of course.
by pfdietz - > Pretty much anything that is still under copyright should be valuable only for its content, not for the physical medium it's printed on.
Well, there are special collectors editions with the signature of the author and gold pages or whatnot. But the AI companies are probably not using those.
by eru - Reminds me of Blood Meridian where The Judge meticulously sketches the rock glyphs that he comes across, and then destroys the original.
Now that I think about it, The Judge is an apt metaphor for AI : "Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent."
by aerodexis - No, it isn't. Nothing about training a model requires this. You're thinking of copyright, which does treat information this way.by karahime
- Can only blame AI companies to a limited extent. This is apparently the legal way to do things because of stupid copyright laws.
Support your local shadow library: https://annas-archive.pk/donate
by Cider9986 - It seems a key contention of theirs is the possibility that rare books are being destroyed this way, yet the things they cite don't seem to suggest this (based on their paraphrasing), they just throw the following at the end to make it seem like it's occurring to irreplaceable books:
> You can't replace the last three copies of an 18th-century botanical text once someone shreds them for training data. And the judge said it's legal.
Is there evidence of this? Since otherwise they could very well be describing what is only occurring to in-print or non-rare books. (This is a genuine question since their post doesn't shed any light on it.)
by Springtime - There is zero reason to shred 18th century books. Any such books are out of copyright.by D13Fd
- Maybe we can kill two birds with one stone: digitize rare books and reverse the damage from Authors Guild v. Google [1].
Let AI companies do this. But require them to make the digital copies public. Maybe with a multi-year delay, to give the original scanner advantage to doing it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google,....
- Yeah, I was thinking along these lines...
Let's say one of the books to be digitized and destroyed is the sole remaining copy of a book from 1850, which is now considered public domain.
On one hand, hoarding such a book, stealing its content from the public domain, locking its content behind a for-profit machine, and destroying the only remaining copy is clearly wrong. It's equivalent to stealing a public resource, just like mining minerals or oil on public lands without a permit or mineral rights. Pure extraction.
On the other hand, taking care to digitize the copy and making it available for free in perpetuity, as well as being required through regulation to provide access to that content through, let's say a public utility LLM/AI available for free through libraries and online... and perhaps after fair due diligence being required to preserve physical copies in a public archive of rare books of which there are no known remaining physical copies...
That seems much more reasonable to me at least. I can imagine there are many who would not see it that way though. Do we see it happening or gaining regulatory, moral and/or public support?
- I see mentions of Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" in that thread but what this really seems to be mostly like is Vernor Vinge's "shred and scan" factory in his novel "Rainbows End".by sherr
- Well it's close to the author's intention for Fahrenheit 451, but just not what everyone wants it to mean.by cyberrock
- Perhaps the last great near-term predictor. I often wish he'd written more. To remind us all, he predicted shred and scan would be a short stop over done by villains on the way to nondestructive scanning.
That said, supporting Anna's archive is one of the best things you could do for humanity long term in my opinion.
by vessenes - That's why archive.org should have never been sued for lending books they had physical copy of. This is the result. Publishers should be more careful what they wish for.by lousken
- > That's why archive.org should have never been sued for lending books they had physical copy of. This is the result
How are these things remotely related? If anything, Archive.org’s callous, thoughtless approach nuked the hands of legitimate archival efforts.
- > Publishers should be more careful what they wish for. you think they don't like people destroying their books? if you destroy a book, that increases the value of the others and the unpublished holdings (unfortunately)by WorldPeas
- Publishers don't care if rare books get shredded?by Incipient
- The archive.org story was more nuanced than that. If I recall correctly the full story was that they used to lend digital versions of books they physically bought and scanned with DRM to enforce a sort of one to one at a time restriction.
But during covid archive.org decided to just remove the limit and lend unlimited copies concurrently which started the debacle with the publishers.
by kingstnap - The publishers sued AI companies for training on shadow library data, hoping to negotiate content deals for big $$$ down the line. Instead, they got analog hole'd.
Turns out that buying an old book for $5 and destructively scanning it for $25 is way cheaper than paying extortion fees to the copyright-mongers.
What I don't buy is it being "rare, precious books". First, they're not after ancient texts - they're after the books that there's still copyright on. Second, when it comes to books, "old" doesn't mean "valuable" - plenty of libraries destroy old books because there's no demand for them, and storage costs you. This is how those scanning companies get books for so cheap.
by ACCount37 - Buying up old books is legal. Digitizing and distilling them arguably is too. And also:
> paying extortion fees to the copyright-mongers
Yes yes, greedy fat cat publishing oligarchs treading on the poor put-upon scrappy AI underdogs. /s
Back in reality, the fraction of people who got into publishing books to get rich collecting rents is… not large. There’s so many other fields that are likely to reward participants with more wealth that it’s absurd — even with all the passion for the work in tech it’s probably relatively less pure.
And whatever the excesses of copyright have been, the whole bargain has always been on more pro-social foundations and stronger intellectual foundations than “extortion” sneers. It recognizes that incentives matter and work that’s valuable should be rewarded and incentivized.
A culture that takes a Robin Hood approach to low marginal cost billing points but fawns over the hypercapitalized distribution King Johns isn’t creating a freer or richer society or fighting the real cartel center, it’s indulging resentment and caricature.
by wwweston - This is such propaganda lol
They change the info (many buyers), destroy the source material, and now the lie is in the LLM.
That's it!
- Modern texts become ancient texts; given enough time.by butlike
- > Turns out that buying an old book for $5 and destructively scanning it for $25
More like destructively scanning it for $0.25, if you include the wear and tear on the machine, the salary of the guy who unjams it when it chokes, and recycling fees.
by pessimizer - I see.. so the various AI companies are in the right on this?by SirFatty
- So they're not valuable... except to AI companies. They should pay a fair amount.by tencentshill