this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2026
635 points (98.3% liked)

Technology

87417 readers
3832 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
635
AI labs buy, scan, shred millions of rare books (www.news.com.au)
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/technology@lemmy.world
180 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Artificial intelligence labs are in a new arms race to buy up millions of rare books, slicing them open, scanning the pages and pulping the remains — sparking concerns that the last remaining copies of out-of-print texts are being destroyed on an industrial scale.

ISBNdb notes that “print books from the pre-LLM era are structurally guaranteed to be free of this contamination”.

“Millions of the most valuable books have never been digitised. They exist only in physical form, scattered across library shelves, used bookstores, and out-of-print catalogues. We get them to you at scale.”

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Atomic@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 weeks ago (14 children)

These companies need quantity over quality. They're gonna buy the cheapest books in bulk they can.

Contrary to what some might think. I'm not taking a stance for AI. I'm just pointing out, no one cared about these books 1 month ago. No one wanted to buy them. No one wanted to read them. That's why they've been sitting on a shelf in a warehouse collecting dust.

They're not valuable in any sense of the word. They're only "rare" in the sense that they sold so poorly, there was no point in printing more.

This is such a silly thing to glue on the hate-train. "They're destroying books no one wanted to read!" Oh no... anyway

[–] Jax@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (6 children)

Yeah, they sit on shelves because the average person - at least in the U.S. - is steps away from brain death.

If more people were better educated and or literate this would not be happening.

[–] Slovene85@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah, they sit on shelves because the average person - at least in the U.S. - is steps away from brain death.

🤣

load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments (12 replies)