Post #4393938
2026-08-05 20:21 UTC
Replies (2)
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@FaceDeer@fedia.io 2026-08-05 20:37
The thing the headlines keep skipping over in pursuit of outrage-clicks is that this is how you scan books in bulk. The spine is removed and the pages are fed through a high-speed scanner in sequence. And the books that these companies are scanning this way are not "rare" in the sense of Gutenberg bibles or first-editions of famous works. These are books that have been sitting untouched in libraries or warehouses for decades because nobody wants them and their alternative fate is simply to be pulped and recycled. AI companies aren't interested in quality, they're interested in quantity. It would indeed be nice if they'd release the results of doing these scans to the public, of course, but that's where copyright raises its head to ruin everything.
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@RobotToaster@mander.xyz 2026-08-05 20:37
Unfortunately it’s a lot easier and quicker to scan a book if you remove the spine, since it’s then just a bunch of pages that can be fed through an auto feeder. Proper book scanners that turn pages are slow and expensive. I don’t like the idea of destroying books, but it’s certainly a lot less unsavoury to destroy a single copy to create a publicly available archive. Not all, in fact probably the minority, of rare books have anything special about their binding. There’s one reference book I’ve been looking for a copy of that was only published 20 years ago in paperback, but copies regularly sell for £150+ on ebay.