Comment by atleastoptimal
7 days ago
They are only destroying the books because they are required to by copyright law. They obviously wouldn't do so if they were allowed to merely copy the book and preserve the original.
7 days ago
They are only destroying the books because they are required to by copyright law. They obviously wouldn't do so if they were allowed to merely copy the book and preserve the original.
If it was $1 cheaper to destroy the books even if they didn't have to, they probably would. Storing books is expensive and selling it on means it could be picked up and scanned by a competitor.
Not true. To the extent that it is fair use to digitize a work for various purposes, it is also fair use to keep the original. It is only if they wanted to resell the original that they would have to delete their digitized copy. The reason they are destroying them because removing the binding is the most efficient way to scan them, they have no use for the originals after they have been scanned, and don't want to spend money storing them.
No, they aren't, for training AI, at least not based on anything but pure speculation.
The recent trial court decision that keeps being pointed to to support that:
(1) Found that for training AI, digitizing and copying works was fair use, period, with no requirement to destroy.
(2) For creating a centralized digital library for general use, digitizing works while destroying the hardcopy was fair use even with no intent to use them for training AI.
There's no copyright law that requires the owner of a copy of a book to destroy it. What are you talking about?
From the ruling of Bartz v. Anthropic:
“And, the digitization of the books purchased in print form by Anthropic was also a fair use but not for the same reason as applies to the training copies. Instead, it was a fair use because all Anthropic did was replace the print copies it had purchased for its central library with more convenient space-saving and searchable digital copies for its central library — without adding new copies, creating new works, or redistributing existing copies.”
I’m not a lawyer, so it’s possible I’m missing something. But it seems to me like the ruling here implies fair use only holds so long as no net new copies, digital or otherwise, are created. If that’s the case, then it necessitates the destruction of the original.
That ruling is questionable at best according to several lawyers that I've spoken to. I hope that one of them will write about it soon.