Unless we know this to be the case it's reasonable to assume it might be more.

It's reasonable to assume the clickbait article with no information is actually important?

The books.

Why would that be a reasonable assumption? This is so blown out of proportion. The imagery invoked by the narrative is one of huge corporations destroying the final copies of literary treasures. That's just not happening.

> That's just not happening.

And that is a reasonable assumption?

I believe that is the rational default assumption, yes. Presumably there is some known list of books that they purchased and ran through these scanning machines. If there are true literary treasures that are genuinely hard to get access to on that list, then I would join the ideological crusade against.

Where is that list so we can be sure? On some internal systems we can't access. So I'd prefer rare books to not be destroyed if there's a risk that it could be the last remaining copy.

Oh, that's really interesting, I'd love to see the list of books that they've digitized too. Where did you find it?

follow the discussion around this on X, i think just a few minutes of research on this topic / reading past the headline you'll find out that this is pretty much a nothingburger

No, what I mean is that I want to know how to figure out what books they are digitizing so I will know what they're trying to improve their models on.

I didn't realize that the list of books was published somewhere, so that you know with confidence what they're adding to the collection.

How do I browse the list you're using for tracking this?

It is interesting to know! My assumption would be it's technical or scientific publications, maybe things like the Springer back catalog (assuming they've not already licensed these). Some of these are "rare" as in they are essentially published PHD theses with very little in the way of sales / print runs.

Of course I could be wrong and they are destroying 14th century monastic scrolls or out of print Mills & Boon editions.

If most but not all, what number are ones that people and collectors do care about?

If collectors cares about them, the sellers wouldn’t have sold it for pennies.

These buyers are reportedly exceptionally non price conscious. What evidence is there that all books are sold for pennies, not just most?

Because they want quantity, and they don’t need specific titles, so they have no reason to pay more than the cheapest bulk prices.

Any bookseller worth their salt will ensure that a truly valuable book will not languish on their shelf for 1 minute longer than it takes to find a buyer willing to pay a fair price.

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.

How do you have confidence in that? These buyers are reportedly exceptionally non price conscious.

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.

because that ended up being the case the last couple times this topic came up and now we've gotten wolf-cried

the part where the article avoids mentioning what book this was is a tell