Thread

Japanese used bookstores see 5x sales surge as books are being bought by the ton

96 points · 130 comments · speckx

tsylba · 1790265354 · focus · HN ↗
Ah yes, the litteral destruction of culture and physical media for a centralised subscription service. I love the liberal world of techno enclosures of our new overlords, viva el free market economy.
1. quickthrowman · 1790266695 · focus · HN ↗
  Feel free to buy books by the ton and preserve them yourself. The simple fact they’re being sold by weight implies they’re not rare or unique.
  1. mistercheph · 1790267715 · focus · HN ↗
    The simple fact that the AI labs are spending billions of dollars to acquire and scan them implies they are rare and unique.
    quickthrowman · 1790269979 · focus · HN ↗
    Please provide proof for the billions of dollars claim, thank you.
    mistercheph · 1790306804 · focus · HN ↗
    25 million books
    scanning+ocr: 0.05 per page * 300 pgs: 15/bk
    acquisition+disposal cost: 2.00/bk
    total acq+scan+dispose = 425M
    settlement value / bk: $3,000 [bartz v anthropic]
    settlement probability, let's say 1%: 0.01
    expected settlement / bk : $30
    expected settlement total: 750M [industry-wide this is certainly an underestimate]
    legal fees: 25% of settlement total: 187M
    total 1.36B
    + operations, engineering, storage

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