AI companies are shredding rare books
Points and comments are a snapshot, not live.
AI companies buy rare books, scan them by cutting off spines, and shred the originals.
A service called ISBNdb facilitates bulk orders of up to a million books, keeping buyers anonymous. Pre-2022 books are premium because they lack AI-generated text. A federal judge ruled the practice is fair use. Anthropic hired the former head of Google Books partnerships to obtain "all the books in the world." The author reports that rare books with almost no surviving copies are being destroyed. ISBNdb's website acknowledges the practice generates little sympathy, and they offer NDAs as a feature, coaching clients to call it "digital preservation."
What commenters are saying
Commenters overwhelmingly condemn the practice as a modern book burning, comparing it to Fahrenheit 451 and the Library of Alexandria. Many argue that shredding originals is unnecessary and cost-driven, not copyright-driven. Some question whether truly rare books are actually being destroyed, citing a 404 Media article listing titles like "Distinct Element Modelling in Geomechanics" (1999) and "Barrett's Traditional Fairy Tales" (2021). A minority defends the practice, arguing that content preservation via scanning is what matters and that rare books are often rare for a reason.