alt Hacker News> ... prevent access to information. ... or find countless video reviews which contain its ideas
Popping in to point out that novels are not "information" in the sense of being lists of facts or ideas. The medium is part of the message. That's why novels can be banned but a list of the facts/ideas are often not.
Reading an AI summary of a novel is not even roughly equivalent to reading the book. (Before AI, there were handwritten summaries like Cliff's Notes that served the same purpose of allowing a person to gain a superficial understanding of a book.)
For example: one could list the key facts of _Roots_ (banned in school libraries in the author's home state of Tennessee in 2026) and not convey the points of the book, which is embodied in the totality of the work. Incidentally, _Roots_ was banned for integral parts of the message of the book.
I think that's a really fair point. A full novel will give you an emotional impact that a list of facts will not provide. A beautifully-told story can convince (at least some people) better than any argument.
I'd still hold that you can just get ahold of books these days if you want to, but your point stands that the mere spread of ideas is not equivalent to really reading the whole book.