They've been very clear that these aren't "special" books. Your gotcha isn't a gotcha.

And come on. They're not revealing the titles because that would reveal which bookseller they worked with.

Who gets to decide what's "special"? Written works might be personal stories or expression of feeling.

I've read a lot of unknown old literature that has little to recommend it as far as literary history goes, but it all has a certain charm, and at the end of the day it was all the work of a human being who walked this earth just like we did and captured their thought on the page.

What if their family has an interest in the preservation of that text? What if they simply don't yet know of it, or couldn't afford it?

Yes all hypotheticals, but I think a lot of people are underestimating the potentially permanent damage being done to the public good just because the actions are not illegal.

Everyone should be uncomfortable with a single company unilaterally pillaging the public good for its own ends. Period.

IDK about you geniuses on hacker news, but I'd much prefer to pay a few hundred dollars for a rare book once to be able to read it than pay amazon token costs monthly to get the LLM's chopped and screwed regurgitation, without any recourse to even knowing where the information comes from.