alt Hacker NewsThe publishers sued AI companies for training on shadow library data, hoping to negotiate content deals for big $$$ down the line. Instead, they got analog hole'd.
Turns out that buying an old book for $5 and destructively scanning it for $25 is way cheaper than paying extortion fees to the copyright-mongers.
What I don't buy is it being "rare, precious books". First, they're not after ancient texts - they're after the books that there's still copyright on. Second, when it comes to books, "old" doesn't mean "valuable" - plenty of libraries destroy old books because there's no demand for them, and storage costs you. This is how those scanning companies get books for so cheap.
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I see.. so the various AI companies are in the right on this?
This is such propaganda lol
They change the info (many buyers), destroy the source material, and now the lie is in the LLM.
That's it!
> Turns out that buying an old book for $5 and destructively scanning it for $25
More like destructively scanning it for $0.25, if you include the wear and tear on the machine, the salary of the guy who unjams it when it chokes, and recycling fees.
Buying up old books is legal. Digitizing and distilling them arguably is too. And also:
> paying extortion fees to the copyright-mongers
Yes yes, greedy fat cat publishing oligarchs treading on the poor put-upon scrappy AI underdogs. /s
Back in reality, the fraction of people who got into publishing books to get rich collecting rents is… not large. There’s so many other fields that are likely to reward participants with more wealth that it’s absurd — even with all the passion for the work in tech it’s probably relatively less pure.
And whatever the excesses of copyright have been, the whole bargain has always been on more pro-social foundations and stronger intellectual foundations than “extortion” sneers. It recognizes that incentives matter and work that’s valuable should be rewarded and incentivized.
A culture that takes a Robin Hood approach to low marginal cost billing points but fawns over the hypercapitalized distribution King Johns isn’t creating a freer or richer society or fighting the real cartel center, it’s indulging resentment and caricature.
So they're not valuable... except to AI companies. They should pay a fair amount.