← Back to context

Comment by ropbear

7 days ago

> The seller agreed to put an Apple AirTag provided by 404 Media in one of the books included in this order so we could see where the book was going. And by extension, which company, AI or otherwise, was behind this massive order.

It would seem the redaction of the rare titles is a way to avoid de-anonymization and subsequent harm to the business of the seller who agreed to place a tracker in one of the books. That being said, maybe they could have chosen a better methodology which would have allowed the disclosure of the title, although ultimately I’m not sure the title matters too much outside of their claim they were “rare”.

21 comments

ropbear

Reply
andsoitis  7 days ago

The issue is if rare is simply "not many in circulation", that's very very different from rare being "it is a unique artifact". The former kind of rarity doesn't really present an existential end, whereas the latter does.

  • brookst  7 days ago

    Yes this is disingenuous to the extreme.

    My neighbor self-published a book, printed I think 100 copies at his own expense. It's literally a rare book. I can't imagine he nor anyone would care if an AI company bought a copy, no matter what they did with it.

    Maybe these "rare books" are first edition Mark Twains, and. maybe they're unwanted books that would otherwise have gone to be pulped. The distinction is important and by not giving any evidence or even a qualitative claim about the types of books, 404 media is being pretty weak here.

  • gamerdonkey  7 days ago

    I don't think HN commenters need to be the arbiters of which books are beneficial to society.

    And beyond just benefit to society, don't forget how subjective the decision about what constitutes a "unique artifact" is. That random product manual from 1966 becomes a near-priceless relic to me if it lets me repair and use the sewing machine handed down from my grandmother. Not necessarily the ink printed on paper, but the information contained within.

    The above is based on a true story involving archive.org's Manual Library. The idea that even such esoteric and forgotten information would get hoovered up into the walled garden of Amazon's AI and then destroyed in the outside world, such that I have to go pay them to access even a facsimile of it, is frankly disgusting.

    • Legend2440  7 days ago

      >That random product manual from 1966 becomes a near-priceless relic to me if it lets me repair and use the sewing machine handed down from my grandmother. Not necessarily the ink printed on paper, but the information contained within.

      On the other hand, now that the manual is in the AI, you can just ask the AI how to repair the sewing machine.

      The information contained within has not been lost, and in fact has become much more accessible.

      2 replies →

    • andsoitis  6 days ago

      > That random product manual from 1966 becomes a near-priceless relic to me if it lets me repair and use the sewing machine handed down from my grandmother.

      That ain’t a rare book.

      I would also be shocked if you couldn’t find a way to repair and use this 1966 sewing machine… so it seems like a red herring.

      1 reply →

throw1234567891  7 days ago

Makes you wonder how many packets with rare books.containing airtags said recipient receives. My guess is: one so far.

  • gamerdonkey  7 days ago

    The warehouse worker getting paid near minimum wage to unpack 100 boxes per hour is probably not taking a ton of time to look for and report AirTags.

    However, a title can be cross-referenced against purchase histories in probably under a minute.

jrimbault  7 days ago

And even then, the "rare" qualifier is not needed here. What Amazon/LLM companies are doing is amoral. This is intellectual piracy (not in the "copyright infringement" sense) at the highest level. Stealing and centralizing the accumulation of human knowledge to eventually rob us all and put all power into the hands in the hands of a handful of people, who are not benevolent.