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Is this an opportunity to self-publish my own book for $100k per copy and be guaranteed one sale?
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Submitted 3 weeks ago by themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
MagicShel@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Thorry@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
No they will simply steal it, like they usually do.
MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
How about 5000 $200 books written by their own AI (preferably for free, cheapest printing in existence) ?
Gsus4@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
Just don’t write it in any OS that backs up your stuff…you know…for safe keeping…
finalarbiter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Anthropic has a cloud service?
Wispy2891@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Unless they buy returned books for pennies
Or books retired from libraries (saw many stamps on scans on 70s books from internet archive that implied disposal from some American library)
Wispy2891@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s not secret, it was their defence when they got sued for copyright infringement. Instead of download all the books from Anna’s archive like meta, they buy a copy, cut the binding, scan it, then destroy it. “We bought a copy for personal use then use the content for profit, it’s not piracy”
FauxLiving@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
“We bought a copy for personal use then use the content for profit, it’s not piracy”
That is an accurate view of how the court cases have ruled.
Downloading books without paying is illegal copyright infringement.
Using the data from the books to train an AI model is ‘sufficiently transformative’ and so falls under fair use exemptions for copyright protections.
ch00f@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yet most AI models can recite entire Harry Potter books if prompted the right way, so that’s all bullshit.
phoenixz@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
we bought a copy for personao use, then use the content for profit, it’s not privacy
So if I buy a song for personal use, then play that song all day in my club to thousands of people, it’s not piracy, is what you’re saying?
Because anthropic is full of shit and some weird ass mental gymnastics doesn’t change anything
After this debacle, nobody can ever again shame me for piracy, let alone punish me for it
some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 3 weeks ago
C’mon now. You’re not nearly rich or influential enough to get away with that and you know it. Rules are for regular people, not the rich or mighty. Sheesh.
/s
Gonzako@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The two legal tiers are making themselves known again
kuneho@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
it would be something more like you buy LPs/tapes/CDs, then form a band that makes songs and albums based around those records you bought then destroyed. I think… or something like that.
SculptusPoe@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
If they reprinted those scanned books and sold them or even gave them away, they would be in more trouble than you would by sharing on limewire by dent of numbers. That isn’t what they are doing with these books.
antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Article is not available without registering. As for the title, “destructive” book scanning means you cut off the binding and put the pages in a scanner which easily flips through them and takes the pictures. If you’re not scanning rare old books, this is a perfectly reasonable way to do it, because setting up a scanner for a normal book and manually turning each page to scan it takes a long time (Internet Archive has videos on how they do it, very nice and impressive, and logical since their original mission was scanning old public domain stuff, i.e. published before 1930 or so). If Anthropic will actually legally buy all those thousands upon thousands of books, that will be a pleasant precedent for an AI company.
Although I very much doubt that random uncritically gathered textual material can “teach their AI tool how to write well”. They’re still pushing for more and more training data, even though it’s clear actual advancement will have to happen (if it can happen) through more refined usage of / training on the data.
MolochHorridus@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Still creating shitloads of trash.
Lemminary@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I imagine they could rebind those books and resell them. Maybe some employees got lucky and get all these “scraps”?
aurelar@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
The fact that they destroyed the books is the most reprehensible thing to me. They could have resold or donated those books to libraries. Instead, they chose the ugliest and most wasteful thing they could possibly do. Despicable.
brognak@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
99.99999% of the time libraries don’t want donated books. Honestly don’t know if they ever want them (outside of genuinely rare/interesting ones, and even then). Their collections are usually meticulously curated and are basically the children of whomever is currently responsible for them. Libraries throw away books at a prodigious rate as they wear, or their circulation numbers drop, or because they just run out of space.
Honestly I have no real issue with people destroying (most) books. It’s 2026 we have access to printers and presses, we can literally make more books on demand, and again for the V A S T majority of books that’s more than good enough (again, not counting anything rare/valuable/interesting but also at that point they kinda cease to become just “books”)
What I have a massive issue with is them hoarding this information, and/or very, VERY, likely breaking any licensing the book may be under. And on top of that seemingly doing a fucking horrible job at actually creating something worthwhile from this massive waste of man-hours and resources.
Kissaki@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
It was physical books?
aurelar@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Well you don’t “scan” a book that’s already digital.
bearboiblake@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
To be fair, destructive scanning isn’t like they destroy it for no reason - to scan a book quickly you need to remove all of the leaves from the binding (this operation is usually irreversible) and feed them into an automatic document feeder scanner. If you need high quality scans of a physical book it’s really the only way to go.
Alberat@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
destroying books seems like a pretty tame problem to me when other companies are doing things like starting wars, getting people addicted to drugs, or destroying our democracy.
SabinStargem@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
Honestly, having ALL media available in digital format, free for everyday people to use, should be a thing. Anthropic, however, ain’t that.
My money is on Anna’s Archive or a descendant being a preserver of civilization.
ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Unfortunately, copyright is purposefully designed so that most works going into the public domain are irrelevant by then and nobody’s willing to convert them.
ToTheGraveMyLove@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
People who are okay with this are absolutely disgusting. Some shitty AI company wastes a fuckton of our collective resources resources to build and run their AI data centers, and if that wasn’t bad enough they generate a fuckton of excess waste to train the goddamn thing. Fuck capitalism.
Jason2357@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
They make everything more expensive. Power, water, ram, storage, and now the used book market will shoot up in cost as millions of books are shredded.
mitrosus@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
AI data centers are cancer to our world - consumes massive energy and water, sucks all the processors and RAM from the market, and raises their price for us. Not to mention environmental impact.
SculptusPoe@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
When a bookstore goes out of business or just can’t sell a book, they don’t return it to the printers, they tear off the cover, return that and by law have to throw the rest of the book in the trash and destroy it. So books are already destroyed by the millions. If they were destroying ancient texts or valuable copies, that would be more something to get excited about. I doubt that they were doing that though.
frongt@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Yeah that’s exactly it. James Patterson, for example, has written dozens of books, and there are billions of his books alone. They’re taking one of each, cutting off the binding, and scanning the pages. This is standard procedure for common books.
So why don’t they want people knowing about it? Because a lot of people are anti-AI and will run misleading stories like this.
I’m as anti-AI as the next guy, but unlike other companies scraping all of reddit and stealing art off the Internet, these guys are doing it mostly properly by paying for the books. They still don’t have a license to use the material in this manner, though.
astro@leminal.space 3 weeks ago
They don’t need a license to use material in this way under extant US law. Copyright is overwhelmingly about reproduction rather than consumption.
ToTheGraveMyLove@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
That much was absolutely is something to get worked up about. Just because it happens more than people realize, that doesn’t make it okay.
astro@leminal.space 3 weeks ago
Words and ideas don’t become sacred when they are committed to paper. Unless they destroyed the last copy of something that has not been digitized, this is totally fine.
trolololol@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I don’t mind if they destroy 10k copies of Fabio’s books. It’s probably not even half of the print run so for a thing, it’s guaranteed to be no harm because there’s enough copies around.
But when you say destroy ALL books, you’re also talking about rare first edition of whatever Shakespeare did, and manuscripts of Beethoven, and authors that I am fond of but I have no chance to buy used or new, or find in a library, because it’s not popular and/or is in a language that is not from the place I live. And that’s not cool.
So first things first, no single entity can have access to all books. Not even reputable historians would get access to anything they just ask around. Then there’s books that have few copies and no one has any clue where they are. Etc etc.
trolololol@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Haha I remembered this post and though it was worth dropping it here
Stefan_S_from_H@piefed.zip 3 weeks ago
“Rainbows End”?
azimir@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Bingo. You’ve nailed it.
Lemminary@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I’m a bit amused that the original author’s post in plain text is used instead of a picture.
DelightfullyDivisive@discuss.online 3 weeks ago
I came here looking for this.
667@lemmy.radio 3 weeks ago
Write a book where the spine is a required piece of the story for its understanding or completion.
Kind of like how House of Leaves is best enjoyed with the actual book.
setsubyou@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I read one once where being able to slightly see through the pages was a key part of the plot
667@lemmy.radio 3 weeks ago
Which one, if you can recall? I love interactive books.
Gerudo@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
I swore I wouldn’t buy another physical book, but I may break it just to be able to read this one.
nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
I love reading actual books. I don’t know why you would quit if you can afford it
667@lemmy.radio 3 weeks ago
It’s a worthy story. Lots of little Easter eggs.
Cracks_InTheWalls@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
In an effort to fight modern techbros, all modern human writers start churning out Oulipianesque texts, and reading books is cast once again as a passtime for weird (perhaps dangerous) nerds.
…actually, there’s some half-decent stories you can tell and ideas you can bat around with this frame informing both format and content. The title Samizdat jumps to mind when thinking about some of them (I know there’s a contigent on Lemmy who might not be thrilled about the connotations, but it’s a good word). Hmm.
sturger@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
The Bookseller.com makes it hard to empathize with their plight when I need to “Register to read for free” in order to hear their outcry.
I’m tired of having to surrender my time, effort and personal information to read someone else’s propagandas. If I’m to read your propaganda, you can at least pay for it.whereIsTamara@lemmy.org 3 weeks ago
Pointless anti ai propaganda.
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Tamara left you to find someone who IS anti-AI.
whereIsTamara@lemmy.org 3 weeks ago
Good.
Filetternavn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
^ Pointless AI propaganda
whereIsTamara@lemmy.org 3 weeks ago
That’s a really great observation! Let’s dive into that.
wewbull@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
Reminder, this includes “Morning Glory Milking Farm” and similar books.
I’m sure that will destroy any intelligence.
KeenFlame@feddit.nu 3 weeks ago
One of the classics…!
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
All of this, so some hustlebro can make his own AI slop blog polluting the internet, so instead of the actual information, you get an AI hallucinated one from googling.
melfie@lemy.lol 3 weeks ago
Well, at least now there is a LLM that can hallucinate based on the contents of all those books.
Sumocat@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
“…plans in early 2024 to scan “all the books in the world” to teach their AI tool “how to write well”.“ — That’s like teaching a writing course by only reading.
GuyIncognito@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
When Kojima scans feet, he does not destroy them.
Teal@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
AI is not my thing. I don’t really appreciate these companies scanning everything under the sun, but this is a case where Google did it better. They used a custom scanner that didn’t require books to be destroyed in order to scan.
slowcakes@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
That’s what they tell you, but really they cheap labor working for pennies in poor countries flipping books. Do you really believe google has Infrastructure to scan all the books in the world in decent amount of time, because I have bridge to sell.
Magnum@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
I have the perfect thing that goes beautifully with your bridge. Sir, have you ever heard of the Eifel Tower?
Kolanaki@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
What are they? The giant brains from Futurama? Are they building an infosphere?
leriotdelac@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Their world is mostly America, so I’m very skeptical about the claim.
mattyroses@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Anyone else ever read Rainbow’s End? Cause this is in that.
bus_factor@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I assume “destructively scan” means to cut the spine off so they lie flat, and that one copy of each book will be scanned? Isn’t that a pretty normal way of doing it in cases where the prints aren’t rare?
Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Probably, yes. I think there’s a copyright reason behind destroying the book?
T156@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Not copyright, as much as if the book isn’t precious, it’s easier to do that, feed the loose pages into the scanner, and then get an intact one if you want it, compared to the additional expense of having to build and program a machine to carefully turn the pages and photograph what’s inside, or the time it would need by comparison.
Grimy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It just doesn’t work if the spine is still there.
Stefan_S_from_H@piefed.zip 3 weeks ago
Or throw the book into a shredder connected to a scanner that combines the page puzzle internally.
floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Yes, but I don’t think they’re checking what they’re ingesting super hard, especially at those volumes.
FauxLiving@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I can’t imagine that scanning ‘every book in the world’ would require filtering, unless a ham sandwich or Nintendo 64 game has a chance of jumping into their production line then ‘If book, then scan’ is the only filter they need.