alt Hacker News> Nobody is saying we’re going to make the original content inaccessible through the previous means after the LLMs are trained on it.
Is that not why they’re shredding the books when they’re done with them?
Replies
b112 • yesterday at 8:30 AM
How is this a fair and reasonable assessment?
From here:
https://x.com/HedgieMarkets/status/2081534588485296565
A quote:
A federal judge ruled the practice is fair use because eliminating the original means only one copy exists at a time.
So no, the reason isn't to keep that information, even from competitors. It's about a legal ruling, which allows them to scan said books without infringing copyright. Judicial decisions and case law have lead to this outcome.
Please stop spreading rumours without any validity.
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First, this has nothing to do with the topic. ACM provides digital access. They don't have a single copy of a physical book which they're going to send to another company for destruction. Like I said, they're not deleting the source material or removing it from circulation.
As the other commenter posted, the original report that AI companies were shredding books was based on a second-hand retelling of a rumor, embellished for "AI bad" headlines.
There are actual bookshops talking about this are saying that most of the books are things like "How to master Microsoft Word 96" and that's why they're rare. They're also saying that the destination shipment is going to FBA (fulfilled by Amazon). They think it's an flipping operation trying to find arbitrage opportunities.
Also the reason AI companies have to destroy books is because they've been legally forbidden from using digital copies available. They had to pay a large settlement for it. So it's not some conspiracy to deprive the world of knowledge. It's what the courts told them they had to do.