[john_strinlai]

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.

[Catloafdev]

The scanning process they use is _intentionally_ destructive, not accidentally destructive.

It's not because they hate books or something. It's literally to stay in the law due to the legal rulings surrounding AI companies and copyright.

If they had the option of not destroying the books without any risk of further lawsuit, they would. They aren't like some crazy people that just want to destroy books.

[john_strinlai]

>The scanning process they use is _intentionally_ destructive, not accidentally destructive.

i am aware. i am saying that there are options to _intentionally_ be non-destructive.

>They aren't like some crazy people that just want to destroy books.

i didnt say or imply they were

[Catloafdev]

The problem is the 'options to be intentionally non-destructive' come with legal liabilities that don't exist if they destroy the original copy.

[john_strinlai]

sure, i agree with that. all they content the pirated originally also came with legal liabilities.

they weighed the risk and made a decision. my comment was not calling them "crazy people" for making that decision. i thought my comment was pretty neutral.

[Catloafdev]

Your comment was fine, I didn't think you were implying that at all. I was just trying to clarify that they aren't choosing to do that for arbitrary reasons.

[Terr_]

> i am saying that there are options to _intentionally_ be non-destructive.

Yes, techniques exist, but they are not "reasonable" here, because for these books the risk/penalties of copyright law require them to be destroyed after the scan anyway.

The non-destructive scanning (if you follow the ArsTechnica links) was done for different books with a different legal situation so that they could be preserved.

[tempestn]

But you're implying that they could use non-destructive means and choose not to.

[john_strinlai]

yeah, i think they could have.

they weren't shy about pirating content before, and i think there is a decent legal argument they could have made. non-destructive scanning is also probably more expensive. so they made a business decision based on risk (and i would assume cost).

i dont think that makes them "crazy people"

[dralley]

Cutting off the binding of the book to separate the pages makes them easier to scan, that's part of the reason why they do it destructively.

[basisword]

They do have the option to not destroy the books. Their hand isn’t being forced. You can choose not to be scumbags just as you can choose to use a legal loophole to rip off writers, destroy books needlessly and resell their content through your service.

[Legend2440]

This benefits me personally by having the information in the books freely available through the AI, which anyone can use. I'm all for it.