[jazzyjackson]

Note it doesn't have to, it's just faster to.

Internet Archive scans their books one page at a time keeping the book intact and stored in a warehouse.

[usef-]

They do: the judge in the Anthropic case said that destroying them means that the text is being transferred, and so therefore can be fair use.

> "The print original was destroyed. One replaced the other."

(I believe the reasoning is that the author is not being financially disadvantaged by more copies of their book existing).

So the current law prefers them to destroy.

[golem14]

Rare books seldom are under copyright and that’s not a concern then.

[usef-]

Is that easy to tell for each book, though?

I usually hear that it's extremely hard to track down the copyright owners for many older things. That's the reason the film/video industry often gives for not digitising the backlog online, and I would expect their volume to be much easier to handle than the book industry.

[golem14]

It’s not easy, but there are good heuristics. If it fetches 10s of thousands at an auction, like an original Gutenberg bible or something, don’t destroy. If it’s my thesis from high school, destroying while making a copy is ok.

It’s really not important to come with a totally bulletproof 100% accurate rule here.