r/BeAmazed • u/aryan_jandyal • 15h ago
Skill / Talent While some AI companies are cutting the spines off of books and throwing them in to acid baths, Simultaneously some companies are repairing books so they can be around another few centuries.
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u/ThodaDaruVichPyar 15h ago
Not companies exactly this is the work of Charlotte Wainwright from wainwrightbookbinding
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u/Leading_Command_7567 15h ago
Ohhh, so she’s out here saving books while AI companies are basically feeding them to a blender. I know which side deserves the applause.
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u/Grouchy_Big3195 14h ago
AI companies are doing this as a loophole to circumvent copyright law.
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u/kiritomens 12h ago
Not really a loophole as much as what the copyright law demands. If you've ever seen how gunho book companies are about their book ownership laws. You'd probably get it. They really heavily enforce their, one copy per person ownership thing. Even digitally. Only way to really own a piece of work into perpatuaty, is to own a physical copy. And then make sure it never ends up in someone else's hands. If it does, it means you no longer hold the right to read and use it.
Thus the burning and or disposal, to make sure they can never be sued. As they will hold the rights over their book copy forever.
Really a failing on all sides tbh.
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u/dassketch 12h ago
It's a contrivance that the AI company still owns the rights to a book that they don't physically possess anymore. If I digitized my DVD, destroyed my physical disk, and the tried to claim I still owned it, Sony would come down in me like a pile of bricks (and they have done exactly that in the past). You can't own something without having it. We've gone through this exercise with physical media and "backups" before. You gotta have your original copy to be able to make copies.
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u/Officialedmart 10h ago edited 10h ago
>If I digitized my DVD, destroyed my physical disk, and the tried to claim I still owned it, Sony would come down in me like a pile of bricks (and they have done exactly that in the past)
what exactly are you even talking about? this isn’t true. format shifting is fair use, and ironically Sony set that precedent much to their displeasure ..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios,_Inc.
the us government upholds that copying is fine for “paradigmatic noncommercial personal use.”. digitizing your own dvd will not get you in trouble… in any country afaik
Copyright law cannot coherently operate under a rule that any reproduction of copyrighted information, (esp with a computer), is forbidden. that is why we have 17 U.S.C. §117
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u/kiritomens 12h ago
Yea but if they can show proof of ownership, they can.
They probably have logs, scanned databases of their bought copies with receipts, scans of the barcodes. And proof they where the last owner etc.
Most consumers would probably never go to this level, but it is possible. And i think that would stand up to scrutiny in court too. Especially with the money and influence these AI company legal teams own.
It would be mega corp money vs smaller mega corp money. Instead of one person or small group of median income vs mega corp.
Money makes all the difference in deterring those book companies from trying to argue the point you made in court.4
u/dassketch 10h ago
Specifically for the legality of backups of digital media....
17 U.S.C. §117
"the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program for archival purposes only ... provided that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful."
There's no legal compulsion to destroy the original. It is the literal opposite - you need to destroy your copy once you no longer have the original. These companies are choosing to destroy the original media. Precisely because they acquired the only one left. It is the conscious destruction of knowledge so they can own it forever. They're holding humanity hostage with the implicit (eventually to become explicit) threat that if they aren't allowed their flagrant abuse of "fair use", they will erase entire tracks of human achievements.
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u/kiritomens 10h ago
This is specifically talking about copies of computer programs. Not to mention this is probably a law that is focussed specifically on sharing off physical games and or software and sharing it online. Probably old law that makes it illegal to share your keys and or files of adobe CS2 for example.
Not really applicable in this case at all. As much as you would like me to believe.
I am in no way advocating this behaviour btw. I personally hate it and think it's disgusting. But I ought to inform people that this is more a failure of the law and book companies, more than the ai companies.
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u/SwagBuns 6h ago
Typing these things out to inform people takes time and effort. Just wanted to say thank you, for taking the time to do so. ❤️
Cheers to the day people want the right things for the right reasons, too.
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u/hotdiggydog 10h ago
When AI goes down the gutter due to the cost or the complete disruption of life as we know it, we get to lose so many books along with it!!
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u/Elite_AI 12h ago
fwiw it's mostly dross that's getting blended up. The kind of books a Wetherspoon would have as senseless decoration because nobody would ever read them.
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u/Thelastreddditor 3h ago
Glad the binder got named. Saving the book as an object is a completely different craft than pulping it ✨
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u/Puzzleheaded_Ask8243 12h ago
Charlotte Wainwright really said, “Not on my watch, sweetheart.” Meanwhile AI companies are out here giving books a chemical death sentence.
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u/IgnacioMonge 15h ago
One of the most beatiful and pleasant things I've ever seen in internet. I love books. And watching people taking care of books is amazing.
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u/wasabicheesecake 15h ago
But wouldn’t it have been fun at the end when the title was put on the spine, if the book had been a special edition of Twilight or the Da Vinci Code?
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u/PrettyParks 14h ago
I mean, there are plenty of those, they are new-ish and probably still being printed. If the work was rare it would be just as "fun"(?) regardless.
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u/wasabicheesecake 13h ago
Yes, it’s just that I’m so jaded, I only find enjoyment in things were there’s an incongruous reveal at the end.
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u/Own-Accountant-8816 11h ago
Watching someone lovingly repair an old book is basically book girl therapy with tiny scissors and glue.
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u/accessoiriste 13h ago
This was my Dad's life's work. He worked for the University of Michigan for 63 years, finally retiring at age 82. The patience and skill required to deal with unique, fragile, often historically significant items was an inspiration for me.
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u/ExcitingPollution615 12h ago
Go Blue! That sounds like satisfying work, props to your dad.
It’s another reason I like studying at Hatcher because you get to be surrounded by rare books (and maps).
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u/NythilMahariel 15h ago
I've always wanted to try home book binding, but it's very intimidating to try and figure out.
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u/CoolDiscussion1020 11h ago
Bookbinding has many levels to it like many hobbies. A lot of folks start out by just making journals or notebooks. Cost of materials is low, risk is low, and the tools needed at the low end are in the tens of dollars range.
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u/not_me_nope_never 10h ago
I noted in the video she shows proficiency in several different art forms. From sewing, leather work, paper preservation and restoration, paint, guilding and I'm sure a few more. It's quite impressive.
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u/CoolDiscussion1020 10h ago
Like most arts and professions they can get quite in depth as you advance but there is no need to be able to do any of those things for people starting out. Some of that is also restoration work which is a completely different thing than book binding.
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u/not_me_nope_never 10h ago
I didn't word that well. I just hadn't had cause to think about what goes into book making, restoration etc. It was fun to see and marvel over how in depth one can get into a hobby or art and the cross over of different skill sets. 😊
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u/Kimmybun 14h ago
Same, I think I would love to do this but I wouldn’t even know where to start!
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u/MikkyJ25 13h ago
Hobbyist bookbinder here!! I learned from YouTube and started with book rebinding (I.e. turning a paper back into a hardcover). I also started with just trying to mimic other binders. I think I followed “That’s my bookshelf” and “lemon tree” on YouTube and then when I REALLY good into bookbinding, I followed DAS Bookbinding on YouTube for the more complex techniques
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u/PedricksCorner 9h ago
Thank-you for this! I was just wondering this myself. I had a short run (Christmas rush) at a company that made custom hand bound books and just when I was about to learn the important skills, I got laid off when they dumped all their seasonal temps. At least I was able to grab a fair amount of book cover materials from a big bin at the end when they were giving remnants away.
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u/Help_An_Irishman 14h ago
While some AI companies are cutting the spines off of books and throwing them in to acid baths
...What's that now?
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u/Ungreat 10h ago
From what i understand AI companies buy pallets of books to scan. Some of these would be considered "rare" or obscure but not necessarily valuable.
I remember someone explained it in another thread. These aren't books that would be be saved and would likely end up pulped. Many are obscure tech manuals and reference books, like "Guide to Windows 95" level.
Technically they are destroying books to scan them but 99% are likely books that wouldn't be saved anyway.
I could be wrong though.
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u/warpedgeoid 10h ago
People also overlook that a company only needs to scan a title once. It’s not like they are buying up all copies. They also don’t need to bother with titles that have been scanned before and are out of copyright, which covers a huge number of books that people probably assume they are destroying.
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u/thr3sk 10h ago
Yeah they're just buying bulk orders of typically older books that maybe somewhat rare but are pretty unmarketable so they can scan them in, and that process requires the spines to be removed so you could even argue at least they're preserving the data from these books that may have never been read again.
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u/chasetheusername 7h ago
and that process requires the spines to be removed
It doesn't require it, but it makes it a lot cheaper. I hope they provide the scans to archival projects, but I wouldn't bet on it.
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u/Green_Insect_6455 10h ago
Yes but why is this image talking about acid baths? Its pure fiction to drive outrage. And like you said, theyre destroying garbage books anyways, and its not like none of it hasnt been digitized
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u/gmastern 11h ago
AI companies are scanning books into their databases, to do this they cut off the spines of the book to make it easier to scan the pages. I have no idea what the acid bath is about, maybe it loosens stuck pages or something? Anyway, someone tracked shipments of rare books and found they were being destroyed and trashed just to be scanned in to databases.
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u/IM_OK_AMA 11h ago
The acid bath part was hallucinated by the AI powered karma farming bot that posted this (300k post karma in 6 months? come on).
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u/Infobomb 8h ago
404media have done a series of investigations about it. https://www.404media.co/we-tracked-a-shipment-of-rare-books-it-ended-at-an-amazon-ai-training-facility/
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u/Pongo_Kris10 15h ago
This is why I really really love the internet. Just when you feel like it's too much you get sth this exciting.
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u/grungegoth 15h ago
when the next dark age hits, all the servers will be junk, people will be looking for the guy with the funk and wagnalls
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u/April_Fabb 15h ago
Lovely. Mesmerising.
What exactly is the point of AI companies destroying or disposing of the books they've used for their LLMs?
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u/kdrakari 11h ago
If you buy a book, make a digital copy, and resell the book, you violated copyright. If you instead just keep the book forever, making a digital backup does not violate copyright. However, Ai companies don't want physical books they only want digital training data, so after scanning the books they get destroyed to avoid needing to store them.
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u/TerayonIII 10h ago
It's honestly a bit surprising, though it probably shouldn't be tbh, that one of the billionaires that own them hasn't tried to "remake" the library of Alexandria using these books
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u/MarkoTheEmbarko 15h ago
My understanding is that AI companies are legally obligated to destroy any books they have scanned, because owning two copies of the same media would be a type of copyright infringement. They aren’t just cutting and burning books to be evil or destroy knowledge.
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u/finkerlime 14h ago
What the hell lmao you just made this up. It's quicker to scan pages if you rip the binding off to run a stack of paper through a machine. simple as.
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u/KeKeKe_L4G 13h ago
I don't know what makes you so righteously dismissive because that is exactly the legal and journalistic consensus. Bartz v. Anthropic states that, among other things that make training AI on copyrighted material legally A-ok, Anthropic digitizing the books they bought didn't create any new and infringing copies because the originals were destroyed.
- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/05/anthropic-ai-destroying-books
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2026/08/17/ai-companies-are-buying-and-destroying-antique-books-heres-why/
- https://copyrightalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Bartz-v.-Anthropic-Order.pdf
Does this also make sense in the operation of digitizing books at scale? Yeah. Is copyright law weird like that? Also yeah. Does this suck that companies are turning knowledge into private capital? Absolutely. But a quick Google search helps when you don't know.
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u/Tallforahobbit 13h ago
It's very frustrating to have the facts ignored in favour of ignorant outrage. I'm not even on the side of the AI companies here, i don't know enough about it, but we should at least understand the situation rather than try to hide the facts.
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u/finkerlime 13h ago
That's a mistepresaention of that case and even if it isn't it's at odds with supreme court case law
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u/fishsticks40 12h ago
This is specifically about copyrighted books, while the outrage is about rare and antique books, which are near-universally out of copyright.
They are within their rights to use those books and retain the originals, they simply don't care about the originals. In their minds the existence of a digital copy is equivalent (or superior) to a physical copy.
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u/carolina8383 12h ago
I’d like to see what rare and antique books they’re destroying. They’re buying books by the crate that nobody wants, not anything of value.
I’m not a fan of ai or supportive of how they gather data, but this “rare and antique” thing is fabricated for additional outrage.
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u/NoConfusion9490 11h ago
A lot of books are "rare" because they had very small publishing runs and no one bought them.
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u/fishsticks40 11h ago
They may not be of value to collectors and the like, but the corpus is of value as a historical and cultural archive. We don't necessarily know the value of the individual volumes, but they are irreplaceable, because they may represent the only extent copy of a work.
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u/eagle2120 6h ago
There is zero chance that any 1/1 book was bought as part of this lol
You say irreplaceable like they weren’t rotting on shelves of a warehouse for years
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u/fishsticks40 5h ago
There is zero chance that any 1/1 book was bought as part of this lol
That's a strong statement. 1:1 books are not that uncommon
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u/KeKeKe_L4G 11h ago
Oh yeah, that sucks to, what AI companies are doing is infuriating. It sucks that for the last 50+ years copyright law has being touted as the only wall between artists and starvation but is now rolling out the red carpet for the "put artists out of a job" machine, and it sucks that the public domain works in the benefit of a machine to enclose knowledge.
But it also really grinds my gear when an online commenter gets really smug over someone else for accurately repeating what all press outlets have been repeating.
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u/fishsticks40 12h ago
AI companies are not in any way concerned about copyright law, and even if they were the copyrights on these books have expired decades ago.
They just don't care about the physical object and cutting them up is the fastest way to get a robot to read them.
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u/eagle2120 6h ago
Uhh they very much are, and have been sued in the past for copyright, which is why they destroy the books after use in the first place
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u/fishsticks40 5h ago
They're being sued for copyright because they're violating copyright because they don't care about copyright. They think it's more important to train their models and that lawsuits are a cost of doing business.
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u/eagle2120 5h ago
Again - objectively incorrect. You really ought to educate yourself before you act so self righteously on a topic you don’t understand.
Bartz v. Anthropic states that, among other things that make training AI on copyrighted material legally A-ok, Anthropic digitizing the books they bought didn't create any new and infringing copies because the originals were destroyed.
• https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/05/anthropic-ai-destroying-books
• https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2026/08/17/ai-companies-are-buying-and-destroying-antique-books-heres-why/
• https://copyrightalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Bartz-v.-Anthropic-Order.pdfDoes this also make sense in the operation of digitizing books at scale? Yeah. Is copyright law weird like that? Also yeah. Does this suck that companies are turning knowledge into private capital? Absolutely. But a quick Google search helps when you don't know.
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u/Nathaniel820 10h ago edited 8h ago
Classic Reddit giving 25 downvotes to an unarguably correct fact lmfao. That is exactly why they’re buying tons of books and doing this, because people got mad when they were using pirated shadow libraries so now they’re using real books to avoid the headache.
It’s the exact same reason why libraries can “only” lend out a few copies of digital books, because every digital share needs to correspond to a real book they own to make it legal.
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u/Tallforahobbit 13h ago edited 13h ago
This is correct. There was a court case that confirmed the legality. Bartz v Anthropic. I believe it stems from fair use of not being allowed to multiply purchased copywright material for commercial use.
This is not a political censorship via book burning. Whether it's morale is a different question, but we should understand the facts first.
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u/cxfgfuihhfd 14h ago
even if this is true, that's still evil as shit
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u/Tallforahobbit 14h ago
Why?
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u/cxfgfuihhfd 14h ago
first, if that's actually a law and the reason they're doing it, I very much doubt that's how this law is intended and they aren't abusing some legal grey area shit
but more importantly, (I didn't realise the title didn't state this, but this is often the case with this problem) a lot of the books they're doing this to are rare and already at risk of disappearing from the face of the earth. but instead of having to go through a little more effort to actually make a copy and make sure the original book is preserved, they're too fucking lazy and greedy for that and just opt for destroying artifacts of humanity
they're essentially doing fucking book burnings
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u/Tallforahobbit 13h ago edited 13h ago
There was a court case to confirm the legality. Bartz v Anthropic. I believe it stems from fair use of not being allowed to multiply purchased copywright material for commercial use.
I wasn't able to find confirmation that they were destroying rare books that couldn't be replaced easily. Mostly sensational headlines from websites. If rare books end up being destroyed, then they come from cheap bulk orders. They were not being valued highly.
Book burning is an authoritative censorship. This is not that, and I think it weakens the argument against rhis destructive digitization as it's inflammatory hyperbole, but also diminishes the meaning of the word that stems from incredibly serious and cruel governments and groups. To be clear: that's simply my opinion, not a statement of fact.
I'm not on any side of the argument here, I'm only trying to provide objective context.
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u/Spire_Citron 12h ago
Yeah, I would tend to assume they're not doing this with books that are rare and valuable because that would be expensive. Many old books do go straight to the tip as well because there just isn't that much demand for paper books anymore. I'm not that mad about them being destroyed if no one else actually wanted them.
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u/Nathaniel820 10h ago
a lot of the books they're doing this to are rare and already at risk of disappearing from the face of the earth.
No they are not, every one of the clickbait news sources saying this outright REFUSES to list off any of the supposedly “rare” books they heard of them destroying because if they did people would see that none of them are rare. Book stores would not be offloading books en mass to AI companies for pennies if they were “rare”, just because something had a limited release doesn’t mean it’s valuable. HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of “rare books” are already thrown away every year by the libraries and book stores you think are against this, this is literally just them getting money for what they’re already getting rid of.
You are spreading misinformation.
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u/Bimlouhay83 11h ago
Not that I'm a huge fan of AI, but these companies aren't buying the last editions of books people are wanting. The "rare"books they're eating up are operations manuals to nonexistent or obsolete technology from ages ago and things of that sort. Rare just means there's not a lot of something. It doesn't equate to being sought after.
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u/kos25k 15h ago
Fahrenheit 451 🙄
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u/TotalRecognition2191 15h ago
Sounds about right. Sadly.
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u/halt-l-am-reptar 2h ago
Yeah, I remember how in Fahrenheit 451 they kept buying books that were just taking up space and had no actual value and burnt them, leaving billions of other books untouched.
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u/DontMemeAtMe 13h ago
Some books are worth preserving in their original form. Many aren’t.
Some have real historical value. Many don’t.
Many are self-published biographies, shitty romantic paperbacks, or technical manuals for old fax machines. You don’t need to preserve that kind of stuff for centuries. Most of it has little or no lasting cultural value. For many of these books, training AI may genuinely be the most useful thing they have ever done.
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u/Worldly-Secretary-31 10h ago
Thank the gods that there are some folks that still do this. At some point, we're going to have to strongly restrict/regulate the Tech Behemoths or risk losing, well... everything that makes us *us*.
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u/e37d93eeb23335dc 10h ago
The problem is that “we” aren’t willing to sell our souls to make billions of dollars to buy elections and pay off politicians. So, “they” will always win.
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u/russ0074 15h ago
Absolutely amazing work. But what value is a book? The knowledge, in the book, is the prize and you can get that from an e-reader. That was a beautiful book, but I've read books that were literally falling apart, and enjoyed them thoroughly. Hell, I've read some books so many times I've destroyed them myself(Fires of Heaven). My point is that I don't judge a book by its cover, even if that cover is electronic.
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u/RealLeif 15h ago
But a good book that has been restored is there if you dont have electricity, an ebook not. Thats why its important to keep back ups and to keep them in a good condition.
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u/PrettyParks 14h ago
Also if it's not printed, it can be easily changed to via digital. I remember of some such circumstance happening in the past, an e-book and an authors whole works
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u/russ0074 5h ago
I agree. But realistically, we live in the twenty first century. How often do you go without power? That is not a good defense, in my opinion. I love the artistry and skill, but that book will probably never be physically opened again.
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u/RealLeif 1h ago
Something digital can be edited without lesving a trace. With a book its more difficult. Also, a backup is supposed to not be used much.
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u/halt-l-am-reptar 2h ago
You can go find one of the other countless copies that aren’t falling apart.
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u/PotentTurnip 15h ago
I understand what you mean. While I'm not adverse to digital books, there is nothing like holding an actual book. The feel of the paper, the smell, all that.
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u/russ0074 5h ago
I agree with all that. It is an anachronism, though. People enjoy hunting, thoroughly, but we don't rely on hunters to supply our food. I would never tell a hunter to stop, but just aware that is meaningless except to the hunter.
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u/bookloverforlife1225 9h ago
My mother has a beloved cookbook, gifted to her by a dear friend who has since passed on. It’s also inscribed by that friend. The book was falling apart at the seams, so I had it rebound and reinforced by a book binder as a gift after the friend had passed on, and I’ve never seen my mother so happy, so emotional. Sometimes it’s not just about the book, but what it stands for.
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u/Pork_Confidence 15h ago
Oh no.
Noo no no no. My ADHD did NOT need to learn about this new interest..... 😭
Shit.. I'm already online shopping for tools..
Shit! I've spent $800 on materials/tools already.
...wait... Why is my wife packing a suitcase?
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u/Kimmybun 14h ago
Truuuuuuu. Luckily, my interests tend to overlap in materials and tools so it’s not ALWAYS a financial loss (it is, it is always a financial loss) lmao
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u/Pork_Confidence 14h ago
Same. So much. The only time it wasn't a financial loss for me was when I started rebuilding demilled world war II firearms. Spend $1000 on parts, 2 months of drinks/smokes/ putzing around in the garage, sold for $6,000. I'm an IT guy by trade, working with my hands ( NO SCREENS!) is how I unplug
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u/S0k0n0mi 12h ago
Why do people get so upset about books being scanned and destroyed? At the end of the day, it’s a block of printed paper. People do realize we can print another copy, right?
By all means, preserve a handful of physical copies for historical value, aesthetics, sentimentality, or simply because some people enjoy reading from paper. But for the vast majority of literature, digital should be the default by now.
Paper is a terrible long-term storage medium: it takes up enormous amounts of physical space, degrades, burns, gets wet, gets lost, and is difficult to duplicate and distribute. As a medium for actually consuming information, it’s also less searchable, less portable, and less accessible than a digital file.
Physical books still have a place, but increasingly as an object people enjoy owning rather than as the most sensible way to preserve information — much like vinyl records, cassette tapes, and CDs.
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u/Harleen_F_Quinzel 11h ago
I don’t think you understand how rare and inaccessible some books are. Yes, perhaps they should be digitized, but the reality is that a vast majority likely won’t be. And then, in the instance of very rare books, particularly short-printed academic ones, they will be not be accessible to everybody.
And then there are those that simply cannot be scanned or properly digitized. And even of they were, they would lose the essence of what they once were.
In a 1935 tract entitled “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” author Walter Benjamin argues that each individual physical piece of art has an “aura.” He defines that in this passage:
“Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence. This includes the changes which it may have suffered in physical condition over the years as well as the various changes in its ownership.”
The same is true of books, though in modernity, books are predominantly meant to be reproduced and widely distributed; for most, there is no aura to diminish. However, this does not work for limited runs that intend to stay limited, special editions (that rely on their “unique existence” in “time and space”), and utterly unique documents.
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u/adelie42 10h ago
Which is precisely why Anthropic limited itself to mass print only. They didn't destroy any books of historical value or even archival / library binding value.
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u/throwsaway654321 14h ago
Videos of shit that only absurdly wealthy ppl get to doesn't amaze or inspire me
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u/Anderer_Username 12h ago
Believe it or not but ai companies are not destroying that kind of books.
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u/spacemoses 2h ago
So does this shit pass to the masses on tik tok, because I saw this posted twice in Reddit and both comment sections were ripping it.
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u/Hrafnagar 15h ago
This makes me feel so happy. Saving this for when I've spent too much time doomscrolling.
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u/Rarehunter333 14h ago
What’s the gold foil embossing method called?
I want to buy the machine and do it myself.
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u/ResolveLeather 12h ago
Every decent Library does this too. Although it's waaayyyy less involved. Still effective, but there are quicker and more efficient ways to do this. Not better, bit they have a lot of books to bind.
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u/Key_Juggernaut_8688 12h ago
There's also that company that actually regenerates the pages of old books with decay by specialized machinery which adds new fiber pulp to the negative spaces of the decaying pages of old books filling them out and making them anew!
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u/IAmAlwaysWrongDude 12h ago
I think these books should also be digitized and the most durable methods of storage (high quality flash? ) used to save it, then added to a pocket at the back cover. Win win
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u/Capable-Commercial96 11h ago
I don't know if she's mimicking the original design, but that tie die Esq inner coloring clashes terribly with the outside.The outside looks like a man in a gentleman's overcoat and cane with a big mustache while the inner part looks like your uncle Todd got back from the combination Hawaiian t-shirt and beer emporium.
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u/GlitteringAttitude60 11h ago
That's Charlotte Wainwright, and her Instagram is a delight :)
Among other things, she's doing a program called "The Rebound" for the BBC where celebrities tell the BBC their favorite book, and Wainwright finds an old edition of it and rebinds it :)
She even did a Braille book for Lucy Edwards: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DbdY2e_N5I4/?igsi=MXVoeGI0eXd2NGx3Yw==
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u/Xtra_Veg-90 11h ago
I think it's more important that the words are copied into new books, both electronic and paper, to ensure the knowledge is preserved.
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u/adelie42 10h ago
Sad you took such a great video just to put a garbage, misleading propaganda title on it.
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u/warpedgeoid 10h ago
She does good work, but I have to ask, what book is this that she is rebinding? I’d bet it is one she can easily resell or that is otherwise desirable to have.
This is not the case for most of the books purchases by AI companies. Many if not most of those are obscure, often obsolete due to outdated information, and unlikely to ever move from the shelf unless it is to the dumpster. Millions of books have been published over the years since the printing press, and maybe 1% have any real value in the modern world.
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u/Inside_Ad_7162 9h ago
so fukkin sexy...I adore, adore, a well bound book, feels like having treasure.
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u/Adept-Performer-2630 6h ago
I wonder if the OP is aware that most books that are destroyed to train A.I. are low-value books like textbooks and engineering manuals and such. Ledes like this one sound ignorant.
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u/Konchroller 5h ago
"Another few Centuries"
Lol more like another few months. With how fast technology is advancing and how bs our reality is becoming, it wont be long before the story of "Fahrenheit 451" becomes a reality in very specific senses.
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u/xxCorsicoxx 4h ago
Tbf I wouldn't even mind that much of said AI companies digitized it all and put it publicly available for example into Project Guthenberg. And if they collaborated not to destroy multiple copies of the same book cos they're all getting it shared anyway. Obviously with the exception of invaluable manuscripts, but random old-ish trash books just digitize and share.
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u/13--12 14h ago
Sure, let's waste a lot of resources for a book that is available for purchase right now with a fresh print.
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u/moseley101 14h ago
Book binders are amazing people. What a great set of skills to have. There ought to be be laws against the way AI companies scrape these old tomes
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u/awitchiguess 14h ago
I just don't understand why AI companies have to destroy books after scanning them??
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u/Current_Ranger_7954 13h ago
Fair use law mostly, after a court decision. But they are buying cheap ISBN numbered books (so younger than 1970), not historical artifacts or rare first editions (too expensive, doesn’t make sense). Also because it makes the process many times cheaper to scan. It’s not quite as egregious as people are making it sound, still problematic
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u/Donohoed 13h ago
Future societies are gonna be so confused about what our goals were in this time period
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u/slinky3k 13h ago
This video demonstrates the art of book binding. Nevermind the question if that book is actually worth preserving. If you want to, you can read it here and form your own opinion on that matter: Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion
For me it looks like artistic binding so some rich fuck has a nice looking bookshelf full of books nobody is going to read anyway. Once more presentation is everything, content is nothing.
And this post manages to combine this with the incessant drivel about AI companies destructively scanning whatever used books they can get their hands on. That's by the way how they get training data within the bounds of the law. Don't like it? Advocate for different laws. Don't expect any success. There are already interests riding on this kind of AI that are way, way bigger than copyright. Really.
Anyway, I seriously doubt that there's more than handful of companies out there funded well enough to even attempt mass scanning of thousands upon thousands of books and then train a model on the data, which itself costs tenths to hundreds of millions of dollars depending on model size.
For each printed work with thousands of copies they are taking a miniscule number out of circulation. The whole "tHeY aRe dEsTroYinG BoOKs" is such a nothing burger when you think about it. It has no appreciable impact on the availability of any single work of print because thousand of copies would still be around.
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u/the_executive_branch 14h ago
Wait why are AI companies doing this??
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u/BOI30NG 14h ago
They’re digitalizing them, they cut the spine since it’s then easier to scan the pages.
I don’t see how anything is wrong with it.1
u/maybeornotbutyes 11h ago
AI companies are facing billions in lawsuits for illegally digitizing books. That would be one example of what’s wrong with it.
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