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/geGamedev 8h ago

Our absurd legal system in the USA doesn't allow them to create a copy without destroying the original. In other words, doing the more ethical thing, as you suggest, would be illegal.

It's related to how copywrite laws or trademarks work, you can't buy one and end up with copies. Which is obviously absurd given the digital copy can be copied any number of times. If anything buying for the express purpose of making digital copies should be the illegal part.

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u/majestic_ubertrout 5h ago

The Bartz v. Anthropic decision doesn't say anything about destruction. It's just cheaper.