ars from a month ago is a bit less emotional about it:
"The court documents don’t indicate that any rare books were destroyed in this process—Anthropic purchased its books in bulk from major retailers"
but also brings up a reasonable point that there are good ways to do this type of scanning non-destructively.
It's not because they hate books or something. It's literally to stay in the law due to the legal rulings surrounding AI companies and copyright.
If they had the option of not destroying the books without any risk of further lawsuit, they would. They aren't like some crazy people that just want to destroy books.
i am aware. i am saying that there are options to _intentionally_ be non-destructive.
>They aren't like some crazy people that just want to destroy books.
i didnt say or imply they were
they weighed the risk and made a decision. my comment was not calling them "crazy people" for making that decision. i thought my comment was pretty neutral.
Yes, techniques exist, but they are not "reasonable" here, because for these books the risk/penalties of copyright law require them to be destroyed after the scan anyway.
The non-destructive scanning (if you follow the ArsTechnica links) was done for different books with a different legal situation so that they could be preserved.
they weren't shy about pirating content before, and i think there is a decent legal argument they could have made. non-destructive scanning is also probably more expensive. so they made a business decision based on risk (and i would assume cost).
i dont think that makes them "crazy people"