A not very spoilery subplot in Vinge's 2006 novel "Rainbows End"
involved UCSD's plan to destructively scan the contents of the
university's library, destroying all the books.

Well, it turns out that the AI startup Anthropic are doing exactly
thus, but on a larger scale:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/01/27/anthropic-ai-scan-destroy-books/

[start quote]

In early 2024, executives at artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic
ramped up an ambitious project they sought to keep quiet. ?Project
Panama is our effort to destructively scan all the books in the world,?
an internal planning document unsealed in legal filings last week said.
?We don?t want it to be known that we are working on this.?

Within about a year, according to the filings, the company had spent
tens of millions of dollars to acquire and slice the spines off millions
of books, before scanning their pages to feed more knowledge into the AI
models behind products such as its popular chatbot, Claude.

Details of Project Panama, which have not been previously reported,
emerged in more than 4,000 pages of documents in a copyright lawsuit
brought by book authors against Anthropic, which has been valued by
investors at $183 billion. The company agreed to pay $1.5 billion to
settle the case in August, but a district judge?s decision last week to
unseal a slew of documents in the case more fully revealed Anthropic?s
zealous pursuit of books....

[end quote]

pt

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.6
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2026-01-28, Cryptoengineer <petertrei@gmail.com> wrote:

A not very spoilery subplot in Vinge's 2006 novel "Rainbows End"
involved UCSD's plan to destructively scan the contents of the
university's library, destroying all the books.

Well, it turns out that the AI startup Anthropic are doing exactly
thus, but on a larger scale:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/01/27/anthropic-ai-scan-destroy-books/

That's last summer's news. https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/06/anthropic-destroyed-millions-of-print-books-to-build-its-ai-models/

I thought I had read of something like this before, but references
to book scanning for the Internet Archive and Google Books stress
a non-destructive procedure.

At least on a smaller scale, people have been doing this for some
time. E.g.:
"The idea is simple: you mail off your books to a company (I?ve tried
only 2 vendors and like bookscan.us the best). They slice off the spine
of the book, scan the individual pages, and send you a PDF. Then they
pulp the book." https://savageminds.org/2012/08/21/destructive-scanning-for-fun-and-profit/

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.6
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Wed, 28 Jan 2026 15:20:44 -0000 (UTC), Christian Weisgerber <naddy@mips.inka.de> wrote:

On 2026-01-28, Cryptoengineer <petertrei@gmail.com> wrote:

A not very spoilery subplot in Vinge's 2006 novel "Rainbows End"
involved UCSD's plan to destructively scan the contents of the
university's library, destroying all the books.

Well, it turns out that the AI startup Anthropic are doing exactly
thus, but on a larger scale:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/01/27/anthropic-ai-scan-de stroy-books/

That's last summer's news. >https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/06/anthropic-destroyed-millions-of-print -books-to-build-its-ai-models/

I thought I had read of something like this before, but references
to book scanning for the Internet Archive and Google Books stress
a non-destructive procedure.

At least on a smaller scale, people have been doing this for some
time. E.g.:
"The idea is simple: you mail off your books to a company (I?ve tried
only 2 vendors and like bookscan.us the best). They slice off the spine
of the book, scan the individual pages, and send you a PDF. Then they
pulp the book."
https://savageminds.org/2012/08/21/destructive-scanning-for-fun-and-prof

it/

The PDF, I suppose, is composed of images of the pages. Since
properly-checked OCD would probably make it much much more expensive.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.6
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Wed, 28 Jan 2026 08:54:05 -0500, Cryptoengineer
<petertrei@gmail.com> wrote:

A not very spoilery subplot in Vinge's 2006 novel "Rainbows End"
involved UCSD's plan to destructively scan the contents of the
university's library, destroying all the books.

Well, it turns out that the AI startup Anthropic are doing exactly
thus, but on a larger scale:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/01/27/anthropic-ai-scan-d estroy-books/

[start quote]

In early 2024, executives at artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic >ramped up an ambitious project they sought to keep quiet. ?Project
Panama is our effort to destructively scan all the books in the world,?
an internal planning document unsealed in legal filings last week said.
?We don?t want it to be known that we are working on this.?

Within about a year, according to the filings, the company had spent
tens of millions of dollars to acquire and slice the spines off millions
of books, before scanning their pages to feed more knowledge into the AI >models behind products such as its popular chatbot, Claude.

Details of Project Panama, which have not been previously reported,
emerged in more than 4,000 pages of documents in a copyright lawsuit
brought by book authors against Anthropic, which has been valued by
investors at $183 billion. The company agreed to pay $1.5 billion to
settle the case in August, but a district judge?s decision last week

to

unseal a slew of documents in the case more fully revealed Anthropic?s >zealous pursuit of books....

[end quote]

I should think they paid out. This is hardly "fair use".

Still, at least the process actually makes sense. The one used in the
book reduces entire libraries to floating bits of paper that it scans
and then reconnects to reproduce the books it came from.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.6
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Paul S Person <psperson@old.netcom.invalid> wrote:

Still, at least the process actually makes sense. The one used in the
book reduces entire libraries to floating bits of paper that it scans
and then reconnects to reproduce the books it came from.

It's like the standard test for rabies, where they take your brain out,
put it in a blender, and then use a tagging agent to detect virus proteins.

Unfortunately whether you turn out to be positive or negative, the end
result is the same.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.6
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)