Your talking about a bunch of books that are out of print and sat unsold for years in a warehouse somewhere. The rights holders could print another run tomorrow if they wanted, or better yet digitize them but they don’t. Where’s your ire for the rights holders who sit on these books and don’t do anything with the ?
It's the collective action of losing access to information that's the issue, not the potential of the book itself.
Regardless, these books were available. Researchers, hobbyists - many people have and will find value.
Justifying the destruction of information for a for-profit company is bizarre.
Destruction of books is normal and totally OK. Publishing houses do it daily in the thousands. When you own something, you can choose how to dispose of it. Come back when you have the title of actually valuable rare books that were bought and destroyed. The 404 article was not well researched in this regard.
The emotional reaction we're conditioned to have hearkens back to 1940s Germany, where the goal was to have people burn all the copies of existing works. But this is not that. They are going for "one of each book" so they have a comprehensive corpus of works to train from. They are willing to buy books to obtain this corpus. It sounds like the system working exactly as intended, with even the book sellers selling these books saying they are "dead inventory".
There's a time to be breathless about "destroying all of humanity's knowledge", but let's wait until it's actually happening.
Again, I'm am very anxious for anyone to come forward with credible information about any valuable/rare/irreplaceable book that was destroyed in this process. So far zero people have been able to do this, probably because they are buying the books in bulk and want to obtain them as cheaply as possible. Book sellers will know the value of any actually rare/valuable books, and would charge accordingly, which would be pointless for e.g. Amazon to pay. They don't need some crazy first edition, they just need some copy to digitize. The incentives just don't add up to "Amazon is buying priceless art and burning it!" the way the narrative suggests.
The publishers and rights holders still have the text, and the books themselves weren’t being accessed just sitting in a warehouse. This is a trivial problem to solve, digitize them.
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It’s their fault they don’t print more of them pr digitize them, yes. The fact is though, most of these books weren’t selling and no one wanted them.
They legally bought the books they are destroying.
I have every right to burn all the books I possess. And so should they.
the argument of some hypothetical "right to burn all the books i possess" is not really the topic of discussion here. it's not a "can" argument, it's a "should" argument.
> it's not a "can" argument, it's a "should" argument.
When you take a pitchfork against all the libraries out there who either refuse donations, or destroy the donated books, then we'll talk.
As plenty of people have pointed out, no one has shown that anything of value has really been lost. Either the works are still available for you to obtain (i.e. they didn't destroy the last version), or they are things no one wanted.
And while it hasn't come up in this thread, it was the last time it was discussed: These companies are legally obligated to destroy the books. It is illegal to scan the book, keep the scanned copy, and sell/donate the physical books. If you don't like that, change copyright law.
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They have no more right to destroy cultural artifacts than you do. It's a red herring, as no one has demonstrated a single loss of a cultural artifact. What was destroyed, that satisfies:
1. You cannot obtain elsewhere
2. That anyone cares about
Destroying a copy of a Harry Potter is not a loss of a cultural artifact if I can still buy the book at a store.
Go ahead and start a campaign: For all who are upset by this, list your physical address, and tell everyone to mail their unwanted books to those on the list instead of destroying them.
The catch is the recipients are not allowed to destroy them. Then we'll see how much those complaining value culture.
Someone needs to write an updated version of Fahrenheit 451, maybe titled Fahrenheit-451GB-A32.
The version where it's legal to own books...?
I'm thinking more of a future where big tech successfully moves the overton window for AI, people gradually rely on getting information/entertainment from LLM's more than books, then it can follow the regular plotline of 451 with the public voting to ban books.