[Terr_]

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.

[pfdietz]

Even without copyright isssues Google would have been perfectly fine in destructively scanning these books.

[beering]

Is that true? I don’t remember Google Books destroying scanned books and they scanned a ton of books.

[beering]

Follow up: I can’t seem to find any ruling that says you need to destroy the scanned book. Destroying the book might bolster your case in a copyright lawsuit, but the law does not require it afaict. I doubt you would lose a lawsuit simply because you put the book in a locked warehouse after scanning it.

[dilyevsky]

yes it's true, us court has ruled destructive scanning is required to make it "fair use" (ianal, etc etc) - https://www.ropesgray.com/en/insights/alerts/2025/06/from-bo...

[bighi]

Are these books being destroyed in the US?

[pbhjpbhj]

They broke copyright law. Too big to care, it something.

Some legislation got pushed through in some jurisdictions to allow them to claim things were "orphaned works".

[vitorfblima]

IANAL, but I think you are allowed to copy work for non-commercial use.

[jerf]

The term you want to Google on is "fair use", and be prepared for a nightmare of complexity and fuzzy borders if you want to really learn about it.

"Non-commercial" use can relate to one particular aspect of fair use, but there definitely is no blanket "you can copy work for non-commercial use" proviso in copyright law.

It fell off the front page but here's a relevant story from today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49123300

[pbhjpbhj]

It's very dependent on jurisdiction (and if you're rich, or a big company).

In UK there's no non-commercial use exception at all.

In USA it can fall under Fair Use, commercial nature is not the sole measure though.

[vitorfblima]

In my jurisdiction (Brazil) there is non-commercial use, but most people don't know about it.

[bighi]

You are mixing the concepts of fair use and non-commercial use.

Non-commercial use is not allowed in Brazil. But Brazil does have some fair use exceptions (like most countries that signed the international agreement on intellectual property).

In Brazil it's illegal for me to make copies of a book and distribute it for free on the streets, for example. It's 100% non-commercial, but still illegal.

[pfdietz]

I don't think so. I believe teachers (for example) have gotten in trouble over this.