AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books

Who says they're rare and nonrecoverable? If they're bought in bulk from used booksellers, they're probably quite common titles.

We throw away nearly a billion books every year. They're not sacred, and scanning a few million isn't a tragedy. People just don't like AI and want to be outraged about it.

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/06/anthropic-destroyed-milli...

ars from a month ago is a bit less emotional about it:

"The court documents don’t indicate that any rare books were destroyed in this process—Anthropic purchased its books in bulk from major retailers"

but also brings up a reasonable point that there are good ways to do this type of scanning non-destructively.

If books were precious physical objects of great value, why is that not reflected in their prices? Used books are usually worthless.

And if their inherent value was so great, regardless of supply or use, wouldn't we be able to churn out infinite value by just printing enormous nunbers of copies and storing them?

This absurd consequence shows the outrage here is without rational foundation. It's feelings run amok. Feels are not a good way to think, people.

Personally, I end up throwing away a decent amount of books that the book donation people won't take. Especially old technical books. Textbooks from 2001. These headlines just don't tell me anything useful. "Rare" doesn't mean anything.

Please, give me one example of an interesting and unique book that the AI companies have destroyed.

I find it interesting that no one cared if these books were destroyed before, but now they are suddenly valuable and worth preserving?

These are books that were sitting in some warehouse waiting to be destroyed until it was discovered that AI companies would buy them in bulk. Most of these books are 'rare' because no one bought them, so they didn't print many, and the ones they did print weren't sold so they sat in a warehouse.

I feel like people are imagining some rare, handwritten book transcribed by some 17th century monk. That is not what these are, they are part of the millions of published books that never get any traction, are barely sold, and then are destined to fade into obscurity as they are eventually cycled out of the warehouse and into the incinerator.

But now that AI companies want to add a 'scan them first' step before destroying them, they are suddenly precious and must be preserved?

At least 80% of the anger here is misdirected, we should be blaming stupid copyright laws created over the last several decades by big-media lobbyists.

Even if the person running the scanner treated every book with utmost love, museum-level care, and holy sanctity... copyright law would still require them to shred/burn the pristine antique book at the end anyway, or else they get sued for bazillions by the modern companies that "own" the book's contents.

People underestimate the massive number of completely useless books that have been published over the centuries. Any significant historical or social contributions are not in danger of going away.

Discussed on 27.jul.2026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49068738 515 comments

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49068738

This is one of those articles that goes out of its way to enrage people, when the underlying reality is far simpler, more straightforward, and less nefarious.

headline is misleading destroy implies the work is lost but AI companies are scanning them to preserve the contents and learn from it and which we will collectively benefit and add to the GDP

it is very common to break the back bones of books for mass scanning, I use one at home, I find old books offline, usually people try to donate them to the library but i buy it from them for scanning. It's the only way to economically and fast, there's no good solution beside cutting the spine and feed them into my scanner.

This is horrifying and dystopian.

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