Your talking about a bunch of books that are out of print and sat unsold for years in a warehouse somewhere. The rights holders could print another run tomorrow if they wanted, or better yet digitize them but they don’t. Where’s your ire for the rights holders who sit on these books and don’t do anything with the ?

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MattDaEskimo 28 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

It's the collective action of losing access to information that's the issue, not the potential of the book itself.

Regardless, these books were available. Researchers, hobbyists - many people have and will find value.

Justifying the destruction of information for a for-profit company is bizarre.

	▲	rpdillon 12 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Destruction of books is normal and totally OK. Publishing houses do it daily in the thousands. When you own something, you can choose how to dispose of it. Come back when you have the title of actually valuable rare books that were bought and destroyed. The 404 article was not well researched in this regard. The emotional reaction we're conditioned to have hearkens back to 1940s Germany, where the goal was to have people burn all the copies of existing works. But this is not that. They are going for "one of each book" so they have a comprehensive corpus of works to train from. They are willing to buy books to obtain this corpus. It sounds like the system working exactly as intended, with even the book sellers selling these books saying they are "dead inventory". There's a time to be breathless about "destroying all of humanity's knowledge", but let's wait until it's actually happening. Again, I'm am very anxious for anyone to come forward with credible information about any valuable/rare/irreplaceable book that was destroyed in this process. So far zero people have been able to do this, probably because they are buying the books in bulk and want to obtain them as cheaply as possible. Book sellers will know the value of any actually rare/valuable books, and would charge accordingly, which would be pointless for e.g. Amazon to pay. They don't need some crazy first edition, they just need some copy to digitize. The incentives just don't add up to "Amazon is buying priceless art and burning it!" the way the narrative suggests.

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2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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shimman 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"Yes we are destroying books but it's your fault!"

Can't believe this is the brain trust of the tech world. It really speaks on how poor SF + VC are at US politics.

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BeetleB an hour ago | parent | next [-]

They legally bought the books they are destroying.

I have every right to burn all the books I possess. And so should they.

	▲	shimman an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		"Shut up, we have the right to destroy cultural artifacts because we have money." lol this is even stupider than the previous comment. Yeah golly gee, I wonder why the majority of the American electorate distrust tech companies, tech leaders, and tech workers? Y'all need to do some mutual aid and get your humanity back.
	▲	GuinansEyebrows an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		the argument of some hypothetical "right to burn all the books i possess" is not really the topic of discussion here. it's not a "can" argument, it's a "should" argument.

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2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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