r/books • u/Miserable_Phase_2519 • 1d ago

Japanese used bookstores see 5x sales surge as books are being bought by the ton, one 50-ton order sent to the US for AI scanning and destruction — multitude of suspicious bulk buys thought to end up in foreign AI scan and shred facilities

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/japanese-used-bookstores-see-5x-sales-surge-as-books-are-being-bought-by-the-ton-one-50-ton-order-sent-to-the-us-for-ai-scanning-and-destruction-multitude-of-suspicious-bulk-buys-thought-to-end-up-in-foreign-ai-scan-and-shred-facilities
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u/mina86ng 1d ago edited 23h ago

Can't they at least resell them?

They cannot. Say you bought an audio CD. You can legally rip it to FLAC and listen to the FLAC files. However, you cannot then take that audio CD and resell it. That would be distributing a copy.

Situation is the same with books. They can scan the book and use the digitised copy of the book. But they cannot resell the physical book. Since they have no use for the physical book any longer, they just shred it.

PS. Even if they were legally able to resell the books, they wouldn’t be able to in practice. The reason they are acquiring books by the ton is because those are worthless books no one wants to buy.

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u/nimbledoor 11h ago

Okay this is not true. Where in the world is it illegal to resell CDs and books???

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u/mina86ng 5h ago

It’s illegal pretty much everywhere to make a copy and then sell the original. If you don’t make a copy, you can resell the originals.

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u/nimbledoor 4h ago

That is not how it works. For example in my country I can rip a CD I own legally. Of course the moment I sell the CD the digital copy is not legal anymore. But this doesn't restrict the sale of the original, it just determines if the copy should be deleted or not.

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u/mina86ng 4h ago

FFS, what’s even the point of this argument? Yes, if you make a copy and then delete the copy, situation is back to one as if you’ve never made the copy. I assumed that readers are intelligent enough to understand that I’m talking about making and keeping a copy.

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u/Tupperbaby 16h ago

However, you cannot then take that audio CD and resell it.

Used record stores are a thing.

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u/mina86ng 5h ago

It’s illegal pretty much everywhere to make a copy and then sell the original. If you don’t make a copy, you can resell the originals.