> I can morn paper but it's not like the contents are being lost
Unless they're sharing the scans publicly or with the Internet Archive or equivalent, they are being lost.
Unless they're sharing the scans publicly or with the Internet Archive or equivalent, they are being lost.
The same effect would be if a hoarder purchased the book and never sold it or showed it to another soul. Same effect if a toddler purchased it, dropped it in their spaghetti bowl, and tore it apart.
But a copy of a book is a copy of a book! Books were designed for multiple copies being printed. Perhaps we recall Gutenberg and that whole controversy of easy printing from a press. So, the thing getting people all in a tizzy is that a single copy of a book that has, perhaps, become rare in 2026, a single copy that languished on a shelf somewhere, is being purchased and consumed.
Honestly, folks, books are really in no danger here. If you know any rare books that are irreplaceable, and with only one extant copy, just buy it yourself. For God's sake! Not rocket science.
The actual reason to get angry about this is copyright law, which would rather have all surviving copies of a (niche, old, rare but still covered by copyright) book in private hands and inaccessible to the public, rather than make it public domain.
Moreover, by scanning the books and putting them into AI models they make the knowledge actually publicly available. There's just no fucking way you'd ever read these books, while there is non-zero chance you might ask an LLM about it.
IMO the correct solution here is:
1. Things should become public domain after much shorter period of time, like 10 years or so.
2. Government should maintain a freely accessible archive of immaterial goods in public domain - music, movies, books.
The effect would be twofold:
1. Open models would have access to similar training data as private models, which would be a huge game changer.
2. Companies would be stimulated to come up with new, exciting media, rather than sell us same shit over and over again.
Buyers and sellers come together of their own free will, unencumbered by interfering third parties and exchange money for goods and services.
There are a lot of comments in this thread proposing some kind of interfering in these transactions.
Don't like Amazon or Anthropic digitizing rare books? Then buy them yourself and stop with the kvetching.