Surely the people granted a legal monopoly to print the books will have kept a copy of the masters in order to reprint any lost works. Surely copyright works as intended for the public good and isn't just rent seeking. Surely.

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ForHackernews 11 hours ago | parent [-]

I can't tell if you're making a joke but many (most?) rare books predate the modern copyright regime and the original printing plates are somewhere in a 17th century midden heap.

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brainwad 9 hours ago | parent [-]

The books being destroyed are not afaik those sort of books. They are just out of print modern books, that are still under copyright (and hence can't legally be scanned non-destructively).

	▲	joshstrange 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> They are just out of print modern books, that are still under copyright OR in-print modern books that they can get for cheaper by buying used. The whole thing is a manufactured outrage over something that doesn't matter. They aren't breaking into museums to steal their only copy of a book and burn it. They are digitizing books. If anything I commend them for what they are doing. If the alternatives were that book rotting on a shelf or being thrown away they doing a great service preserving it, even if they don't make it available publically (which they can't for copyright reasons). It's literally no different from them stocking a private library with these books, except it's better because digital copies are much easier to preserve.