TL;DR: AI companies are secretly buying, scanning, and destroying millions of physical books to train their models, permanently locking human knowledge inside private corporate servers. Anna’s Archive is urgently calling on volunteers worldwide to scan and upload books before this cultural heritage disappears forever.
Well, who’s talking about trying to sell them? Once again: capitalism. Rebinding the books would allow them to be sent to a physical archive in a usable way.
How else do you think they got the books?
My understanding is, by buying them. But that does not mean they have to do the same. They are filthy rich, they can afford to rebind and donate the books.
But donate them to whom? The books were one step away from the pulpers when they bought them in the first place, who’s going to take them that values them more than that?
Also, these companies are not charities. What do they gain out of all that extra expense?
AI companies are filthy rich (at our expense).
They can afford to donate books.
Once again: “capitalism” is not the answer.
In another comment regarding these books, you said:
So it really seems you’re just insisting on this because you think it will make things harder for them. You don’t care about the books or who they go to in the end.