> We’re not revealing the titles of the books included in the shipment we tracked, but they are rare, meaning there are not many copies of them in circulation. Sometimes that’s because not many copies of them were ever printed, and sometimes because they are in a foreign language not many people speak.
Not even the title of one of those rare books?
ropbear•26m ago
> The seller agreed to put an Apple AirTag provided by 404 Media in one of the books included in this order so we could see where the book was going. And by extension, which company, AI or otherwise, was behind this massive order.
It would seem the redaction of the rare titles is a way to avoid de-anonymization and subsequent harm to the business of the seller who agreed to place a tracker in one of the books. That being said, maybe they could have chosen a better methodology which would have allowed the disclosure of the title, although ultimately I’m not sure the title matters too much outside of their claim they were “rare”.
andsoitis•21m ago
The is is if rare is simply "not many in circulation", that's very very different from rare being "it is a unique artifact". The former kind of rarity doesn't really present an existential end, whereas the latter does.
brookst•7m ago
Yes this is disingenuous to the extreme.
My neighbor self-published a book, printed I think 100 copies at his own expense. It's literally a rare book. I can't imagine he nor anyone would care if an AI company bought a copy, no matter what they did with it.
Maybe these "rare books" are first edition Mark Twains, and. maybe they're unwanted books that would otherwise have gone to be pulped. The distinction is important and by not giving any evidence or even a qualitative claim about the types of books, 404 media is being pretty weak here.
jrimbault•21m ago
And even then, the "rare" qualifier is not needed here. What Amazon/LLM companies are doing is amoral. This is intellectual piracy (not in the "copyright infringement" sense) at the highest level. Stealing and centralizing the accumulation of human knowledge to eventually rob us all and put all power into the hands in the hands of a handful of people, who are not benevolent.
andsoitis•14m ago
In what way is this stealing?
The rare qualifier is used precisely because no reasonable person thinks this is stealing.
x______________•5m ago
Hoarding.
Nothing good comes from hoarding whether it being toilet paper, money or knowledge.
plpbs•11m ago
As I understand it, "rare" in this context could mean anything—even a washing machine manual from the 1980s...
koliber•29m ago
I watched Short Circuit yesterday. All I can think now is "need input".
Havoc•20m ago
Bad enough to steal IP but destroying books…that’s just evil
jcarrano•16m ago
According to the article, the scanning facility has been there for a while, so it may well be that they have been destructively scanning books for a while, even before AI. It makes sense for the major book retailer to have digital copies of every book so that it can begin selling those as soon as it can negotiate the rights (if there are any).
In any case, all the indignation about destructive digitization misses the point that rare books takings space in a warehouse for years without being bought will eventually be destroyed anyway.
fg137•8m ago
I don't understand why Amazon still bothers to blow money on their in-house AI effort (outside AWS Bedrock). What have all the scraping, scanning and training led to? Nobody is using their models.
fancyfredbot•6m ago
I look forward to the day that AI companies pay large advances for new books.
andsoitis•43m ago
Not even the title of one of those rare books?
ropbear•26m ago
It would seem the redaction of the rare titles is a way to avoid de-anonymization and subsequent harm to the business of the seller who agreed to place a tracker in one of the books. That being said, maybe they could have chosen a better methodology which would have allowed the disclosure of the title, although ultimately I’m not sure the title matters too much outside of their claim they were “rare”.
andsoitis•21m ago
brookst•7m ago
My neighbor self-published a book, printed I think 100 copies at his own expense. It's literally a rare book. I can't imagine he nor anyone would care if an AI company bought a copy, no matter what they did with it.
Maybe these "rare books" are first edition Mark Twains, and. maybe they're unwanted books that would otherwise have gone to be pulped. The distinction is important and by not giving any evidence or even a qualitative claim about the types of books, 404 media is being pretty weak here.
jrimbault•21m ago
andsoitis•14m ago
The rare qualifier is used precisely because no reasonable person thinks this is stealing.
x______________•5m ago
Nothing good comes from hoarding whether it being toilet paper, money or knowledge.
plpbs•11m ago