What worries me about the trends is inevitable sanitization of content or straight out falsification.
In more liberal sense, because you might be destroying something unique that later generations might actually like to see, the life rule that states "Don't be a dick" probably applies trumps even first sale doctrine.
While I wish there was a repository of every book that was already digitized (it pains me this is the best solution), there isn't one and so I think this is not a real problem.
It'd be a different story if they had furnaces that ran only on rare books that they had to continually feed books to but that's not what's happening here. And that 1 destroyed copy will "live on" in a way that it otherwise might not.
I have a few "rare books" and have read many, you'd be suprised at what is publicly available on google books since like ~2010ish.
The first was destructive. This was for mainstream books currently being published so they had no value. It's (I believe) where you cut off the spine and scan the pages.
For rarer books, there was a non-destructive process. Basically the book was opened to each page and scanned. This was slower but didn't destroy the book.
I don't understand why these companies haven't just licensed the scans Google has already done. Why is each company doing this rather than just scanning the books once and sharing the scans?
Because for the vast majority of the books, Google doesn't have the legal right to license those scans. It would be legal if the books were out of copyright, but despite the connotation of "rare books" those generally aren't the books we're talking about. Further, in the cases where Google didn't destroy the original of the book they scanned, their scanned copy may be considered infringing under the new standard, so Google doesn't want call undue attention to what they have.
So far from how I see how powerful organizations work, I'm not as certain as I would like to be.
* They're only buying a single copy of that book as they only need one to scan
* If the book was public domain (or should be), then there should be an effort to "democratize" that data into a public commons of intellectual property?
(Also the person who coined Singularity, though Ray Kurzweil really wanted everyone to think it was his idea.)
rohan_•45m ago
wahnfrieden•44m ago
ButlerianJihad•37m ago
If AI-scanners are somehow bid-sniping bona fide collectors and wealthy aficionados, there may be cause for concern. But that is most certainly not happening here.
wahnfrieden•33m ago
Personally when seeking out rare books with few copies in existance and extremely scarce availability, I have often found listings that have lasted for quite some time. Not all rare books go to auction. You might be thinking only of some extreme of notable works and not a wider spectrum of desired but scarce publications that does indeed exist contrary to your confident assertion.
timmmmmmay•25m ago
the part where the article avoids mentioning what book this was is a tell
cortesoft•22m ago
wahnfrieden•20m ago
cortesoft•15m ago
jasonvorhe•24m ago
nh23423fefe•21m ago
k33n•19m ago
a2ff6eeb0•14m ago