Thread

1. zirkonit · 1790265261 · focus · HN ↗

   Our family volunteers at a nonprofit that moves a huge number of books. We take donations and run massive charity sales, clearing tens of thousands of books a month. Pricing works like a ladder: you try to sell a book for a couple of bucks, then for a dollar, then by the $5 bag, then for free, and you still end up with thousands of books nobody wants even at no cost. These used to go straight to pulp. Now they go to AI labs for scanning. Would we rather they were read, or at least owned, by someone? Yes. Is scanning better than turning them into toilet paper? Yes, even if only marginally.

   I'm sure the Anthropics of the world have shredded the last known copies of plenty of titles. But nobody talks about the last known copies that get pulped every day simply because there are so many books nobody wants and storing them is expensive.

   1. sly010 · 1790266674 · focus · HN ↗

      Well, they could turn the bad faith story into a good faith story by making them available for everyone to download perhaps. (AI companies "saving" old books!) But that would require giving a s*t which they don't and that is the real problem imho.

      1. Aurornis · 1790266755 · focus · HN ↗

         They legally cannot do this.

         1. sly010 · 1790267993 · focus · HN ↗

            That would require effort (to sort, acquire copyright, etc) which they wouldn't put in. Because they don't care.

            People obviously feel bad about companies doing this. People reading these stories don't care what's legal, they care what's ethical. Heck, re-publishing long lost material would make AI companies heroes instead of bad guys.

            1. Aurornis · 1790268306 · focus · HN ↗

               > That would require effort (to sort, acquire copyright, etc) which they wouldn't put in. Because they don't care.

               I don't think you have any idea how expensive it is to acquire the copyright for a single book with the intent of making it freely available online. That's equivalent to asking the rights holders to perpetually forgo all possible earnings from the material, and they expect to be compensated accordingly. Even paying lawyers to begin assembling what's needed to make this happen would be five figures per book to get started.

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