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The 404media article mentions notably https://nltimes.nl/2026/06/25/rare-book-dealers-fear-tech-firms-destroying-obscure-editions-train-ai-models https://nltime

• infinite_spin 2mo ago
  > Barrett's Traditional Fairy Tales (2021) How is a book from 2021 considered rare in this context? There's almost certainly a digital copy of it in existence prior to Anthropic purchasing a print edition.
  • ACCount37 2mo ago
    Niche text. It's not impossible that there was only ever under a thousand of them printed and released into circulation. A digital copy would exist somewhere, of course. But for us, that only matters if we can buy or download it. And for AI companies, that only matters if they can get a digital copy DRM-free and licensed permissively enough.
    • sidewndr46 2mo ago
      This argument doesn't make any sense. All manner of AI companies just ingest whatever random text they can find on the internet to train their data, including copyrighted publications. Why would DRM on a digital copy of a book matter?
      • eru 2mo ago
        There might be special rules around DRM that go beyond normal copyright?
        • jdub 2mo ago
          Ladies and gentlemen, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (which is terrible, but I would be delighted if they breached it and got thoroughly spanked)
          • sidewndr46 2mo ago
            so if I base64 encode my blog, have some Javascript that 'validates' an authorized viewer and then decodes the base64 into HTML which is added to the DOM does that constitute DRM ?
            • pessimizer 2mo ago
              Yes.
            • goldlimetea 2mo ago
              [dead]
              • efreak 2mo ago
                The DMCA doesn't care exactly how the authorization works, it only cares that it's needed. Quote from Wikipedia[0] of DMCA section 103: > No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title. > "circumvent a technological measure" means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner; and > a technological measure "effectively controls access to a work" if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention_laws#Circumvention_of_Access_Controls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention_laws#Circum...
                • goldlimetea 2mo ago
                  [dead]
      • streetfighter64 2mo ago
        > Why would DRM on a digital copy of a book matter? Because DRM is just a way to make "breaking copyright" more practically cumbersome. What's easier, breaking digital DRM for each and every E-book you find, or just establishing a single pipeline for scanning physical books?
        • sidewndr46 2mo ago
          breaking DRM is so easy my generation was doing it as kids, there is no technical obstacle there.
          • TeMPOraL 2mo ago
            It's a manual process. More importantly, it's also explicitly illegal. Destructive format-shifting is not. Thank copyright laws.
            • eru 2mo ago
              Why would it be a manual pass? There's only so many DRM schemes, and you can even use your previous generation AI to help with the breaking. > More importantly, it's also explicitly illegal. Agreed!
              • streetfighter64 2mo ago
                Again, what's more technically feasible? Setting up a DRM-cracking LLM and manually verifying that it's actually succeeded for each and every DRM scheme you encounter, or just throwing the books in a regular old office scanner and being sure it works without even checking...
• tokai 2mo ago
  Non of those are rare. All a available in libraries for ILL.
• timmmmmmay 2mo ago
  so... not rare, then? another fear mongering article lying to everyone.