this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2026
623 points (98.1% liked)

Technology

86780 readers
3805 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
623
AI labs buy, scan, shred millions of rare books (www.news.com.au)
submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/technology@lemmy.world
179 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Artificial intelligence labs are in a new arms race to buy up millions of rare books, slicing them open, scanning the pages and pulping the remains — sparking concerns that the last remaining copies of out-of-print texts are being destroyed on an industrial scale.

ISBNdb notes that “print books from the pre-LLM era are structurally guaranteed to be free of this contamination”.

“Millions of the most valuable books have never been digitised. They exist only in physical form, scattered across library shelves, used bookstores, and out-of-print catalogues. We get them to you at scale.”

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Used books are practically free to begin with

if you want any old used book, sure. if you want a specific used book, maybe you might have to spend ten to twenty to a thousand (i have needed some rare texts over the years).

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world -2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

you want a specific used book, maybe you might have to spend ten to twenty to a thousand

Show me the thousand dollar copy that an AI company destroyed and we can revisit this.

Nothing in the article identities an actual valuable work being destroyed. They're just "rare", which can be anything from unpublished manuscripts of failed writers to drafts of screenplays that never got produced to limited run publications that never sold a copy.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

Show me the thousand dollar copy that an AI company destroyed and we can revisit this.

Now you're just being argumentative. It's destroyed. How can I do that?