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Some AI bro made a huge order (200+ €) of rare italian books at full price with the purpose of destroying them in order to train some model
In the beginning he was puzzled why some american would want to spend hundreds of dollars to import discontinued books on mostly religious topics (a real human would never buy this stuff, it's ultraniche and expensive), then we connected the dots.
“I love burning books nobody would read”
It looks like you accidentally misspelled "using" as "burning."
You seem to have a deep misconception on what happens to books “used” for AI training: they are destroyed.
Can you explain what happens to them?
There’s been plenty of reporting on it, but here are some Wikipedia articles to start you off:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Panama
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_scanning#Destructive_scanning_methods
Feel free to test this method of “using” books at your local library to see how well it works out for you. Just be sure to do it with something worthless, like a JKR book.
I don't think I could do that at the library. Wouldn't I need to purchase the books first?
If it isn’t destroying them then you won’t need to.
I'm assuming there would probably still be some copyright issues. I don't think it's okay to just go into a library and steal books by copying them even if they aren't destroyed right?
Oh no, as long as you’re using it for educational purposes you can legally copy any book you want. My college’s library actually has a book scanner set up for us to use, it’s tided me over while waiting on books I’ve ordered for class to get in. You can completely skip out on buying the textbooks if your class doesn’t require a code from the book to access tests/homework.
This is news to me. Do you have any legal sources you can point me towards? I would love to maintain my own digital library of nondestructively scanned books without needing to buy them or pay any of the copyright holders.
That would probably violate fair use, since it’s not for educational purposes: https://nic.libguides.com/c.php?g=924632&p=6664204
Thanks. I appreciate you spending the time to provide me with a link. However after a close reading of the page you provided, Copyright, Fair Use, and Plagiarism for Students: "Fair Use" of Copyrighted Materials, I've come to the conclusion that what you have described, whether for educational purposes or otherwise, does not constitute fair use.
🤷♂️ I’m not a lawyer, basing this off what my teachers have told me. All of which is pretty unrelated to Anthropic destroying books.
Well, it's somewhat related as it would seem that when it comes to US copyright law, making a digital copy of a book is a violation of the author's rights unless you destroy the book after making the scan. Even then it's still on shaky ground as it depends on what you then go and do with that digital file.
It only seems right that when you choose to cheat these hard working human authors out of their due by stealing their intellectual work, you should do so with full knowledge of its illegality.
Lmao, I’m sorry you are not going to be able to recite an incantation of the law at me that makes me decide destroying rare books is good.
And we've finally come to the point I was trying to make from the beginning. In this particular case it's Copyright law that is bad.
For example. I have a collection of physical cookbooks that I am in the process of digitizing because I would like to have them in my self hosted Mealie server, and many of them are old and delicate so this is the only way to protect their contents.
Many of these books are rare, no longer in print, and have no digital editions. Now I have a bit more leeway in my case because the recipes themselves are not subject to copyright (only the compilation), but still the only fully legal way for me to digitize these books is to destroy them after I've scanned them.
This is a problem with copyright and the commercialization of knowledge in general, not something that is specific to Anthropic or any AI company. So the point is, if you want to rage out at something, make sure your ire is targeted in the correct direction.
In this case that direction should be towards reforming copyright law, and establishing broader adaptation of the copyleft philosophy (which I very much support).
And just to clarify, yes Anthropic destroying a bunch of books is less than ideal, and you can argue that the reason they want them in the first place is dumb or evil as well, but the actual act of destruction is being compelled by US law and applies to anyone in any similar situation.
Dude, go google shit yourself, for the love of god. Can you do anything on your own? Do you need someone to chew your food for you too?