Obviously this isn’t ideal, and fuck the massive amounts of destruction (environmental, economical, societal) of AI, but these stories amount to ‘book owner does what they want with books they own’.
I don’t disagree with any of these responses, and I’m not saying reporting on this to make people aware of it is bad or pointless.
Just because it’s legal, that doesn’t make it right. Corporations do terrible things all of the time which are perfectly legal.
If I was the owner of the only copy of an important book, I would have the legal right to destroy it, but nobody could argue convincingly that I did a good thing.
If I was the owner of the only copy of an important book, I would have the legal right to destroy it, but nobody could argue convincingly that I did a good thing.
I’d argue that, if the destruction was done to digitize the book, what you did was a good thing. Would you disagree?
There’s a huge difference, an absolute chasm, between non-destructive scanning, which was always an option by the way, for the purposes of putting it in a public archive and And destructive scanning with the intent to hide it from the public where it may never surface for all we know.
There’s a huge difference, an absolute chasm, between non-destructive scanning, which was always an option by the way, for the purposes of putting it in a public archive
Like Anna’s Archive, or Sci-Hub. Famously legal.
If only they uploaded everything to those archives, the scanning would be perfectly fiiiiine.
First, I was discussing the hypothetical put forth by that other person.
Second, “hide it from the public” is almost certainly a function of copyright law. Just because you are allowed to digitize a book doesn’t mean you’re allowed to distribute it.
Except they own those books only because they locked out regular people who want them and used insane amounts of capital they’ve stolen from said people to buy everything up.
This isn’t a guy deciding to toss his copy of a book. This is a company who has destroyed industries and the environment and used basically slave labor forcing people to pee in bottles to meet insane requirements all to hoard wealth that they used to hoard more things.
Condensing it to"book owner does what they want with books they own" ignores so many historic and systemic problems that led to this.
This is one of those “Legally nothing is wrong, but morally and ethically it definitely is”. Still a case where I throw even more massive shade on these companies for doing it. They could have just been donated to a library, there was no need to destroy them.
I read the article and don’t see what you’re seeing. Can you point out the “false pretenses”. It seems the order was placed via a site that intentionally allows anonymous purchases.
As a sidebar:
a bookseller suspected that an order they received for 1,000 books on Biblio, a marketplace where buyers can remain anonymous, was for an AI company. So to get to the bottom of the mystery, they agreed to place an Apple AirTag between the pages of one of the volumes.
Emphasis mine.
That seems sketchy to me. I’m not confident it’s illegal, but I’m guessing a website that intentionally allows anonymous purchases isn’t going to take kindly to a vendor putting a tracking device in an order.
Oh no. Won’t somebody think of the billionaire whose monopoly that got exposed by some independent journalists who couldn’t be bought or bribed. How tragic.
If Amazon is behaving ethically, they don’t need to hide what they’re doing.
Yeah, you know that episode where Homer does pranks for Mr Burns and goes in and buys a no 1 spiderman from the comic book guy and eats it in front of him. That’s how most people feel about book destruction. Nothing legally wrong, but disgusting nonetheless.
When a person purchases something, it’s that person’s personal property. When a corporation purchases something, it’s that capitalist’s private property.
A true analysis of this type of headline would be more along the lines of “capitalist uses capitalism to encircle and entrench their capital at the expense of human culture and society”
Obviously this isn’t ideal, and fuck the massive amounts of destruction (environmental, economical, societal) of AI, but these stories amount to ‘book owner does what they want with books they own’.
I don’t disagree with any of these responses, and I’m not saying reporting on this to make people aware of it is bad or pointless.
So now what do we do about it?
You could take those downvotes as an invitation to check if those other stories (environmental, economical, societal) hold up any better.
Just because it’s legal, that doesn’t make it right. Corporations do terrible things all of the time which are perfectly legal.
If I was the owner of the only copy of an important book, I would have the legal right to destroy it, but nobody could argue convincingly that I did a good thing.
I’d argue that, if the destruction was done to digitize the book, what you did was a good thing. Would you disagree?
There’s a huge difference, an absolute chasm, between non-destructive scanning, which was always an option by the way, for the purposes of putting it in a public archive and And destructive scanning with the intent to hide it from the public where it may never surface for all we know.
Like Anna’s Archive, or Sci-Hub. Famously legal.
If only they uploaded everything to those archives, the scanning would be perfectly fiiiiine.
First, I was discussing the hypothetical put forth by that other person.
Second, “hide it from the public” is almost certainly a function of copyright law. Just because you are allowed to digitize a book doesn’t mean you’re allowed to distribute it.
A digitized copy which isn’t shared with anybody else? Yes, I would disagree.
As opposed to a single copy of a physical book?
Except they own those books only because they locked out regular people who want them and used insane amounts of capital they’ve stolen from said people to buy everything up.
This isn’t a guy deciding to toss his copy of a book. This is a company who has destroyed industries and the environment and used basically slave labor forcing people to pee in bottles to meet insane requirements all to hoard wealth that they used to hoard more things.
Condensing it to"book owner does what they want with books they own" ignores so many historic and systemic problems that led to this.
This is one of those “Legally nothing is wrong, but morally and ethically it definitely is”. Still a case where I throw even more massive shade on these companies for doing it. They could have just been donated to a library, there was no need to destroy them.
The article is evidence that the books were sold under false pretense.
I read the article and don’t see what you’re seeing. Can you point out the “false pretenses”. It seems the order was placed via a site that intentionally allows anonymous purchases.
As a sidebar:
Emphasis mine.
That seems sketchy to me. I’m not confident it’s illegal, but I’m guessing a website that intentionally allows anonymous purchases isn’t going to take kindly to a vendor putting a tracking device in an order.
Oh no. Won’t somebody think of the billionaire whose monopoly that got exposed by some independent journalists who couldn’t be bought or bribed. How tragic.
If Amazon is behaving ethically, they don’t need to hide what they’re doing.
Hindsight makes people come to very foolish conclusions.
Hint: what if it didn’t turn out to be Amazon?
Yeah, you know that episode where Homer does pranks for Mr Burns and goes in and buys a no 1 spiderman from the comic book guy and eats it in front of him. That’s how most people feel about book destruction. Nothing legally wrong, but disgusting nonetheless.
When a person purchases something, it’s that person’s personal property. When a corporation purchases something, it’s that capitalist’s private property.
A true analysis of this type of headline would be more along the lines of “capitalist uses capitalism to encircle and entrench their capital at the expense of human culture and society”