zlacker

>>bayind+(OP)
> In the process, the company cut millions of print books from their bindings, scanned them into digital files, and threw away the originals solely for the purpose of training AI

Oh boy. The more I learn about how genAI companies work, the more detestable they appear to be.

>>JohnFe+x3
You got suckered by the clickbait. Destructive scanning (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_scanning#Destructive_scan...) isn't unusual for books that are common enough that an individual volume is of no particular value.

>>Throwa+P6
I didn't get suckered by anything. I'm aware of the practice. I find it objectionable. That they did this is just another thing on the growing list of objectionable things that genAI companies seem to enjoy doing.

To be honest, I probably wouldn't have even commented on it if it were the only bad thing these companies do.

>>JohnFe+na
It was only legal because they did it this way.

> Ultimately, Judge William Alsup ruled that this destructive scanning operation qualified as fair use—but only because Anthropic had legally purchased the books first, destroyed each print copy after scanning, and kept the digital files internally rather than distributing them. The judge compared the process to "conserv[ing] space" through format conversion and found it transformative.

Very laws that the publishing industry has lobbied so heavily to make so strict are the reasons for this behavior.