Good to see someone making this point. I'm confused by the panic, because they are making it out like AI companies are destroying every copy of the book. They only need one, and they destroy it after scanning it only because they don't want to store them all. And storing or archiving all these books is not a trivial task.

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sergimansilla 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

No, they are destroying them because that’s the way that they can keep a digital copy legally.

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beering 9 hours ago | parent [-]

This is not true. Google Books does not destroy books. No court has ruled that you must destroy books to legally keep a digital copy.

	▲	tingletech 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think under first sale doctrine you have a much stronger case with destructive scanning. Google Books, HathiTrust, and Internet Archive's book scanning project have had a lot of legal expenses.

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voidhorse 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You don't know that. A major part of the problem here is the lack of transparency.

Keep in mind we wouldn't even know this was happening were it not for investigative journalism.

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andsoitis 9 hours ago | parent [-]

> we wouldn't even know this was happening were it not for investigative journalism.

Pretty feeble investigative journalism if they cannot give us the names of even 5 such books we are supposed to be outraged about.

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shagie 9 hours ago | parent [-]

While not an authoritative source... https://old.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1vugion/the_federal_... (and not actual book titles)

> Correct. I work for a large used bookstore with an online component. We're getting slammed with orders for books like the proceedings of an obscure 1992 Dutch geology conference or $500 festschrifts about D-module applications we would have previously sold to some university library. We've never once had an order for anything anybody would actually want, and most of this shit has sat on our shelves for years, if not decades. It would have eventually found its way to the discount rack and then the dumpster. At least this way we're getting some money in that we can use to buy actual cool books/collections, pay salaries and bills, etc.

So... something like Neutron Radiography: Proceedings of the First World Conference San Diego, California, U.S.A. December 7–10, 1981 - https://www.amazon.com/Neutron-Radiography-Proceedings-Confe...

I make no claims that that's a such a book that's been ordered, but that's the type of book that the reddit post references.

	▲	alightsoul 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That data is useful as a source of scientific knowledge even if it's not current. Although it's probably already online, they probably don't want to download it and risk getting another copyright lawsuit

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fortran77 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They are destroying them because it’s easier to scan them if you slice the binding.

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eloisant 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I didn't fully understand why but apparently there is also a legal reason to destroy the books, it makes it them less likely to be considered copyright infringement.

	▲	beering 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Not really. Selling the book onward does seem legally dubious but legally nothing (yet) prevents you from storing the book in a warehouse. obviously it’s cheaper to dispose of them.

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cdkmoose 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

And very hard to re-assemble after you have done that. They are not in the book binding business.