AI is buying up secondhand books by the thousands — and destroying them
Secondhand book sales are booming. Is it because of AI?
Independent booksellers worldwide report mysterious bulk orders of used books, often shipped to warehouses and destroyed. The culprit appears to be AI companies like Anthropic, which are 'destructively scanning' books to train large language models. A US court ruling allowed this practice, but UK copyright law may differ. Booksellers are torn between the sales boom and ethical concerns over losing rare volumes.
The world no longer needs five million copies of The Da Vinci Code.
- chis
Whatever judge ruled that it was legal to scan and use books if and only if you DESTROY a copy of the book was truly a moron. The law gets bent by judges all the time to be practical and fair, they should have used this opportunity to give a more sane ruling.
- Cider9986
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- throwaway27448
Books are seemingly more expensive than ever but paradoxically declining in material and substantial quality (i.e., are poorly edited and printed). Buying used books is just good financial sense.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7
1786782923 | Secondhand UK and Irish booksellers suspect AI firms behind strange bulk orders | https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/aug/15/uk-irelan... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49308856
- solenoid0937
Don't all these AI companies run at negative margins? How do they afford to buy all the books in the world?
I don't see how these companies are not already bankrupt given how much they subsidize