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Comment by rdtsc | Hacker News Reader

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

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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.

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.

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