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Comment by chis | Hacker News Reader

Whatever judge ruled that it was legal to scan and use books if and only if you DESTROY a copy of the book was truly a moron. The law gets bent by judges all the time to be practical and fair, they should have used this opportunity to give a more sane ruling.

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I thought they were destroyed just because they rip out the spine to scan them more easily?

That is an element, but given the PR cost I’m sure they would use non-destructive scanning if they could.

No, the core problem is that keeping a scan is legal if and only if you destroy the physical copy.

Which is completely bonkers, because they are going to go on and make copies of their scanned copies- for backup purposes.

It would have made more sense for them to be required to store, maintain, and never sell the original.

What if taking the first picture of the Mona Lisa required it to be destroyed?

The argument is so bad that a part of me is starting to wonder if it might be a deliberate signal from a judge under extrajudicial pressure. Like a hostage trying to blink morse while reading a message from his captors into the camera.

"Do what they ask for but do it so badly that perhaps some people start asking the right questions"

It's both. The court has ruled that they can't make a copy of the book, but if they scan and destroy the original then it's fine because it's not creating additional copies.

By that insane logic a digital copy isnt a copy. So a digital copy of a bluray isnt a copy either. I guess piracy isnt piracy as long as i destroy the original. Sweet! Are we finally seeing the "lets treat digital as if corporial" concept crumbling?

Yeah wtf putting something in ram for temporary use is a copy but this isn't?????

Even if you ignore the nonavoidable copies which happen during normal usage of digital files there is no way they don't dozens of different real copies of their training dataset across many different servers accessible by many people.

Yep, it should just be illegal as a whole

The result is moronic but given the confines a judge is operating what else could he do? Is it legal for you to buy a book and tear it down? The problem is the law, and the people who vote for the legislative bodies not asking more from their representatives.

What was the supposed reasoning there? That the company can’t resell the books to profit or let others read or scan them?

That keeping the physical copy intact would mean creating a copy, and they don’t have the copy right.

I see the reasoning. I don't like or agree with it though but thank you for explaining it.

I think it shouldn't be illegal unless you give the copy to someone else.

You are describing “piracy”. The laws against copyright violation are what require both the destruction of the book, and not distributing it.

The whole thing is exceptionally stupid, and really, they should just download the archive copy of Anna’s archive (which is what the Chinese are doing, and what US labs were doing)

Who is “they”, you think, if not the Chinese or US labs?

Anna’s Archive still doesn't have everything — I suspect all these books described are not in this great dataset.

Isn't the "copyright" meant to prevent someone else other than the creator taking advantage of the material?

Greatly simplified: The copyright protects distribution of the material. Once they sell it, they can't keep me from taking advantage of it, except in regards to creating additional copied for distribution. I can, for example, quote it in a critique and distribute that for profit since I have transformed the original work into a new work.

The AI giants were arguing that if they bought the books they can scan them. The court said they can if the original doesn't exist anymore. The same court would presumably be ok with you making a digital copy of a VHS but only if you destroyed the original tape afterwards.

I think it is to avoid dealing with unauthorised copies. If you forbid their existence, you never have to deal with them. Much easier than making laws about what you can and cannot do with the copies you made or what someone else can/cannot do with the copies that you made.

This is probably coming from the music/film industry lobbying. They are generating artificial scarcity. Not unlike the diamond industry.

What's the point in attacking the judge? Judges just apply the law as they find it, by analyzing the wording of the legislation and any binding precedents from previous cases. The judge is only a "moron" if they stated a point of law which is actually wrong (wrong in the sense of being contrary to the law, not wrong in the sense that you don't like it), and even then "moron" would be a pretty harsh assessment unless it's a glaring mistake. It's often the case that the law isn't obvious or entirely clear and judges have to make their best effort to work out the correct meaning. Even then, their job is to apply what they think the law intended to say, not what they think is morally the best interpretation.

If you really must call someone a moron, you should direct it at the legislators who made the law (or left it sufficiently unclear) which resulted in the judge's conclusion.

The ruling did not say that. This has been widely misreported. The books are destroyed because it's much easier and faster to cut off the spine and use a sheet fed scanner. Non destructive scanners are much slower.

Fairly certain precedent has already determined copyright is violated at the time of duplication regardless if destroyed afterword. This judge clearly didn't want to bother with this headache of a case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Alsup

Common law is insane, this is just the last example.

Wasn’t the ruling following the copyright statute?

the judge didn’t rule on that specifically

the article mentions it

So reading more I guess the judge narrowly ruled that destructive scanning is legal because of the one to one replacement, but didn’t rule on whether or not non-destructive scanning would be legal. It’s still not tested if scanning in that way would count as transformative fair use.

which case are you reading?

...so like, I'm not actually sure the copy and destroy thing is wrong. Hear me out. As an artist, the value of your work is directly related to how many copies are in circulation. You have been paid for the existing copies--you would like those to go out of circulation so that you can mint new copies without deflating the price.

The actual problem is that copyright lasts too long. Imagine if copyright was only 13 years. There's obviously no need to destroy anything that's out of copyright. Anything newer than 13 years should either still be in print, or the original author consciously decided to take it out of print, as is their prerogative.

In a rational world with perfect information, yes, limiting the supply would help the artist. The world is not strictly rational. As someone with family in the book business, I can promise you that there are tons of irrational buyers.

Book buyers will buy because they see other people reading that authors books (more copies in the world means more sales in this case), they will buy special editions of their favorite books they already own, they will buy copies of books that they intend to read once and give to a friend even when the library is a block away and has copies, they will pay extra to have a hardcover new release even though there are effectively infinite other books that could entertain them until the paperback is released. Rational economic choices are actually not a given at the consumer level.

I fully agree about copyright. As a wild example, unless jk Rowling dies in the next three years, Harry Potter will have US copyright that started in the 20th century, and extends into the 22nd century.

The book burners of the modern age.

yep - if these were only scanning books & end there then most people wouldn't have complaints.

but nah they're destroying very rare, out of print books in the process.

then after - when you ask their stochastic parrot some fringe question it won't answer cz of 'safety'. when literally one could buy a book and find the answer.

“Very rare, out of print books…” Horsepoop. 99% of the books they are doing this to are the like of “The Guide to Memphis 1971,” or “How to Use Lotus Organizer for IBM OS/2: For Beginners (1999).”

Don’t be a Luddite for the sake of being “edgy.”

It doesn’t matter what percentage of the books aren’t rare, it matters what percentage of rare books are getting shredded.

As an aside, a lot of old things like “Memphis guide” are useful to a variety of researchers.

Hopefully someone will leak these archives so at least the knowledge isn’t lost.

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