this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2026
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AI labs buy, scan, shred millions of rare books (www.news.com.au)
submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/technology@lemmy.world
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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.”

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[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 27 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Because when you destroy the publicly available source you become the only available source. Paid, of course.

The final nail in the coffin for humanity, locking knowledge behind digital sources that are inaccessible in event of catastrophe.

[–] motruck@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago

Crazy how we had all this information available and all we did was lock it up and make it for sale. The internet was an awesome place we shared ideas easily and without massive corporate "sponsors" now the owners of the internet are the corporations and they are just riding t till the wheels fall off.