alt Hacker News> But, that little bit of data is a bit more data than existed before,
No, it’s not. Undigitized data is still data. Wording, style, nuance, type, artwork, binding, metadata, attributions, citability… all of these things are permanently lost, which is a fucking tragedy because they don’t have to be. Even if you’re not willing to take the time to scan every page in a cradle scanner, as rare books should be, (and don’t tell me they don’t have the money to get a handful of library interns to do this,) you can disbind the books and store them as they did in the Caselaw Access Project at Harvard Law. They removed the pages from the binding, scanned them on a high speed conveyor belt scanner which yielded full color 600 DPI jp2 images, placed the pages back in the binding like a folio that could be re-bound if needed, vacuum sealed them, and stored them in a salt mine. It’s not like it was slow, either — we did 40k in 18 months and we did take the time to scan the rare ones with a cradle scanner. And we did it all in less than open AI probably spends in a day on inference.
> So, in that sense, the knowledge is better being spread compared to copyright where the book stays in a warehouse until it is disposed of.
That’s a false dichotomy. Libraries exist for this exact reason, and their not already having a copy does not make “you snooze you lose” a morally acceptable strategy.
I’ve been pretty cool on the direction of SV for the past decade at least, but I am absolutely gobsmacked by the unbridled hubris of these companies over the past 5 years.
Replies
>all of these things are permanently lost
A small fraction of them is saved in the model. Far more is saved in the digitized copy as long as they keep it which they have plenty of incentives to do so (future training of newer models).
That's more than what happens if that book was burned or sent to a landfill, but less than if the book is giving a loving home.
>They removed the pages from the binding, scanned them on a high speed conveyor belt scanner which yielded full color 600 DPI jp2 images, placed the pages back in the binding like a folio that could be re-bound if needed, vacuum sealed them, and stored them in a salt mine.
My understanding is that this simply isn't legally allowed for these books. The original must be destroyed for the digital copy to not be copyright infringement.
>That’s a false dichotomy.
I pointed out there is a spread of possible outcomes and that different people are considering different outcomes and the comparison of if this is good or bad depends upon which outcome one considers. I even mention that both outcomes are sometimes right. That's about as far from a false dichotomy as I can see it.
> Undigitized data is still data. Wording, style, nuance, type, artwork, binding, metadata, attributions, citability… all of these things are permanently lost
I understand what you mean but... "permanently lost" sounds dramatic. When I trow away old pictures, old drawings or pieces made by my son at school, they are lost as well. Not that I do that often, but it begs the question, should every 'ip' made by humans be preserved?