You guys have heard the Seinfeld Isn't Funny trope thing? Where Seinfeld had a style of humour on the show that became such a widespread cultural sensation that people who watch the show after became immersed in comedy derivative from it think it's not funny because all the jokes are boring? McSweeney's is from the turn of the century, other side, and so should be classic.
But this feels like a mashup of the Twitter snowclone "I'm the guy who was in charge of sending the HBO email / writing the GCP AI announcement / etc" with the classic goes-on-too-long Reddit bit. I know, I sound like a guy ranting about a satirical piece but it just sounds like a Reddit copypasta snowclone. And not because of it, I'm sure, but because that style is pervasive.
Ah well, it's my fault for ruining my brain on reams of Reddit content. Mostly I'm just commenting to see if anyone else has burned their neurons on garbage like I have (DAE? See, the reddit is everywhere).
The author of the 404 article that broke this story (about "rare books" being destroyed by AI model companies) was interviewed by NPR. The books, so far as anyone knows, turn out to be manuals for old office equipment or vanity press material. They are indeed rare, but they're rare for the same reason my 11th grade history papers are rare: nobody cares about them.
Meanwhile: the book industry destroys books by the millions every week. Destruction is part of the natural lifecycle of a book. Books are not generally preserved. If you box up all the books you find in your parent's attic and haul them to your local library --- if they accept donations at all; many don't, and will tell you to take them to thrift stores --- the majority of those books will also end up in a dumpster.
Might I suggest that any copyright domain where these texts can be freely offered receive them as a secondary recipient?
Do this quietly.
Edit: "and sometimes a handwritten note from 1894 that I don’t bother to read"
From this time, there is no excuse. Preserve these digitally, as you found them, for the public good.
Alternate take: was the intellectual murder of this author required to feed your neural network? Do you realize how awful this looks?
To be legal: request an AI in Australia if you want it to know about Orwell.
Edit: Claude says: “Worth flagging: this is satire, not a real employee. It’s a McSweeney’s humor piece by Jack Loftus — the “guy who destroys antique books” is a fictional voice piece, not a real Anthropic person giving an interview.”
McSweeneys is of course a satire site. A list of destroyed books would require leaking proprietary information from the AI companies, unless one of them volunteered the list (or disclosed it in a court filing). They have admitted to destroying books in court.
This claim was new to me recently, but I've seen it's become widespread. From other HN threads, it sounds like it's based on what Judge Alsup wrote in the Bartz v. Anthropic case, in which Anthropic's destroying scanned books was one factor supporting a finding of fair use.
I could see companies wanting to try to fit their activities into the same contours that the court approved there, since they could then argue that they should be just as protected as the defendant in that case was (that is, it may have inadvertently established a set of practices that companies would like to copy). However, it doesn't seem to me that the court concluded that destroying books was necessarily required (in particular because the contrary scenario wasn't examined there). That is, the court felt that destroying scanned books made the fair use argument stronger, but didn't say, as far as I know, that the fair use argument would necessarily fail without it.
But indeed, I guess it might take a lot for a company to decide to create a different and untested fact pattern and then defend it from scratch in new litigation.
I suppose to the author then, that aesthetic, social or historical preservation reasons, nostalgia etc. and other non-economic perspectives should also be ignored?
If someone scanned and reproduced the Mona Lisa, and then destroyed the original, do you think most people would be ok with "it's just an inventory problem"?
You guys have heard the Seinfeld Isn't Funny trope thing? Where Seinfeld had a style of humour on the show that became such a widespread cultural sensation that people who watch the show after became immersed in comedy derivative from it think it's not funny because all the jokes are boring? McSweeney's is from the turn of the century, other side, and so should be classic.
But this feels like a mashup of the Twitter snowclone "I'm the guy who was in charge of sending the HBO email / writing the GCP AI announcement / etc" with the classic goes-on-too-long Reddit bit. I know, I sound like a guy ranting about a satirical piece but it just sounds like a Reddit copypasta snowclone. And not because of it, I'm sure, but because that style is pervasive.
Ah well, it's my fault for ruining my brain on reams of Reddit content. Mostly I'm just commenting to see if anyone else has burned their neurons on garbage like I have (DAE? See, the reddit is everywhere).
What would be great was if those scanned books were made available in their entirety for public consumption if they are old and rare.
I guess we're doing this again.
The author of the 404 article that broke this story (about "rare books" being destroyed by AI model companies) was interviewed by NPR. The books, so far as anyone knows, turn out to be manuals for old office equipment or vanity press material. They are indeed rare, but they're rare for the same reason my 11th grade history papers are rare: nobody cares about them.
Meanwhile: the book industry destroys books by the millions every week. Destruction is part of the natural lifecycle of a book. Books are not generally preserved. If you box up all the books you find in your parent's attic and haul them to your local library --- if they accept donations at all; many don't, and will tell you to take them to thrift stores --- the majority of those books will also end up in a dumpster.
Basic suggestion: many countries give much less time for copyright than the U.S.
Gutenberg Australia has all of Orwell online for download, legally:
https://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty-n-z.html#orwell
Might I suggest that any copyright domain where these texts can be freely offered receive them as a secondary recipient?
Do this quietly.
Edit: "and sometimes a handwritten note from 1894 that I don’t bother to read"
From this time, there is no excuse. Preserve these digitally, as you found them, for the public good.
Alternate take: was the intellectual murder of this author required to feed your neural network? Do you realize how awful this looks?
To be legal: request an AI in Australia if you want it to know about Orwell.
Edit: Claude says: “Worth flagging: this is satire, not a real employee. It’s a McSweeney’s humor piece by Jack Loftus — the “guy who destroys antique books” is a fictional voice piece, not a real Anthropic person giving an interview.”
The post is so well written but I think I only got the first part. Or is that it? If so write more, you’ve got talent!
None of the articles I have read on this topic name any specific books. I couldn't see the name of a specific book in this article either...
McSweeneys is of course a satire site. A list of destroyed books would require leaking proprietary information from the AI companies, unless one of them volunteered the list (or disclosed it in a court filing). They have admitted to destroying books in court.
Why destroy, though?
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/06/anthropic-destroyed-milli...
Because they're legally required to.
This claim was new to me recently, but I've seen it's become widespread. From other HN threads, it sounds like it's based on what Judge Alsup wrote in the Bartz v. Anthropic case, in which Anthropic's destroying scanned books was one factor supporting a finding of fair use.
I could see companies wanting to try to fit their activities into the same contours that the court approved there, since they could then argue that they should be just as protected as the defendant in that case was (that is, it may have inadvertently established a set of practices that companies would like to copy). However, it doesn't seem to me that the court concluded that destroying books was necessarily required (in particular because the contrary scenario wasn't examined there). That is, the court felt that destroying scanned books made the fair use argument stronger, but didn't say, as far as I know, that the fair use argument would necessarily fail without it.
But indeed, I guess it might take a lot for a company to decide to create a different and untested fact pattern and then defend it from scratch in new litigation.
Because they're literally the devil
> rarity is really just an inventory problem
I suppose to the author then, that aesthetic, social or historical preservation reasons, nostalgia etc. and other non-economic perspectives should also be ignored?
If someone scanned and reproduced the Mona Lisa, and then destroyed the original, do you think most people would be ok with "it's just an inventory problem"?
Can't say I'm on board with that.