Comment by Springtime
6 hours ago
It seems a key contention of theirs is the possibility that rare books are being destroyed this way, yet the things they cite don't seem to suggest this (based on their paraphrasing), they just throw the following at the end to make it seem like it's occurring to irreplaceable books:
> You can't replace the last three copies of an 18th-century botanical text once someone shreds them for training data. And the judge said it's legal.
Is there evidence of this? Since otherwise they could very well be describing what is only occurring to in-print or non-rare books. (This is a genuine question since their post doesn't shed any light on it.)
There is zero reason to shred 18th century books. Any such books are out of copyright.
They are, but using the same process for all books is simpler and cheaper.
Though they're not shredded simply due to copyright, they're also shredded due to cost, speed and the quality of the scans.
Yes, that is what the person you are responding to is saying. That's why they are questioning the assumption that this practice extends to 18th-century books that are solidly in the public domain.
If it is happening, it is an outrage. However, the 404 article doesn't actually provide any evidence of this; it just connects the shredding of digitized books and the digitizing of rare books to the assumed shredding of rare books, which isn't necessarily happening.
Just sociopaths doing sociopath things. Bugger civilization.