From what I understand, the rare books in question are not some historically relevant medieval manuscripts, but rather some relatively recent books (still under copyright) for which there are few print copies available for purchase.

I am not sure that physically destructing one copy of this type of book to preserve its contents digitally is so bad. Pretty much anything that is still under copyright should be valuable only for its content, not for the physical medium it's printed on.

> historically relevant medieval manuscripts,

These are increasingly available online, btw. Historical research is accelerated when historians have direct access to scans of relevant source material. Not destructively scanned, of course.

"To preserve them digitally"

For whom? is the relevant question

> Pretty much anything that is still under copyright should be valuable only for its content, not for the physical medium it's printed on.

Well, there are special collectors editions with the signature of the author and gold pages or whatnot. But the AI companies are probably not using those.

Is slightly modifying some weights in a markov chain somewhere really preserving it's contents?

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