{"version":"1.0.0","segments":[{"startTime":0.24,"endTime":4.08,"body":"Hey everyone, welcome back. I'm your host, Greg Doig. Today's"},{"startTime":4.24,"endTime":8.0,"body":"episode hit me harder than I expected. We're talking about something that feels"},{"startTime":8.24,"endTime":12.0,"body":"like it walks straight out of a dystopian novel, except it's happening"},{"startTime":12.32,"endTime":15.92,"body":"right now in 2026. AI companies are buying"},{"startTime":16.16,"endTime":20.0,"body":"up physical books, especially older pre-2022 ones"},{"startTime":20.32,"endTime":23.84,"body":"by the pallet. They're cutting the spines off, running the pages"},{"startTime":24.24,"endTime":27.49,"body":"through high-speed scanners, And then shredding or pulping the"},{"startTime":27.73,"endTime":31.33,"body":"originals. We're talking thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands"},{"startTime":31.73,"endTime":35.41,"body":"of books at a time. And the rare ones, the obscure"},{"startTime":35.65,"endTime":39.17,"body":"titles with almost no surviving copies left, those are going"},{"startTime":39.49,"endTime":43.01,"body":"into the machine too. So let's break it down. The driver"},{"startTime":43.33,"endTime":46.93,"body":"here is AI slop. The internet is so full of"},{"startTime":46.93,"endTime":50.53,"body":"AI-generated text that companies training the next generation of models"},{"startTime":50.77,"endTime":54.53,"body":"are desperate for clean, Purely human-written data."},{"startTime":54.77,"endTime":58.45,"body":"Printed books from before the chatbot boom are gold. They're"},{"startTime":58.69,"endTime":61.57,"body":"curated, edited, structured. No machine"},{"startTime":61.73,"endTime":65.41,"body":"hallucinations. Enter intermediaries like"},{"startTime":65.65,"endTime":69.17,"body":"ISBNDB. They'll source massive"},{"startTime":69.65,"endTime":73.09,"body":"bulk orders up to a million books, keep the buyers anonymous"},{"startTime":73.57,"endTime":77.09,"body":"with NDAs, and ship them off. Their own marketing"},{"startTime":77.49,"endTime":80.98,"body":"even acknowledges the optics problem. One line floating"},{"startTime":81.38,"endTime":85.22,"body":"around is basically, AI company destroys 2 million books,"},{"startTime":85.86,"endTime":89.38,"body":"is not a headline that generates sympathy. So they coach"},{"startTime":89.7,"endTime":93.18,"body":"clients to call it digital preservation."},{"startTime":93.38,"endTime":97.22,"body":"Anthropic is the most documented case. Court filings showed"},{"startTime":97.46,"endTime":101.14,"body":"they hired Tom Turvey, the former head of partnerships for Google"},{"startTime":101.46,"endTime":105.22,"body":"Books, and set out to get all the books in the world."},{"startTime":105.31,"endTime":109.07,"body":"They bought, destructively scanned, and disposed of millions of"},{"startTime":109.31,"endTime":112.67,"body":"print copies to train Claude. A federal judge in the"},{"startTime":113.55,"endTime":117.15,"body":"2025 Bards v. Anthropic case ruled that when you"},{"startTime":117.31,"endTime":120.59,"body":"lawfully buy the physical book and destroy it after creating the digital"},{"startTime":120.99,"endTime":124.19,"body":"version, that format shifting counts as fair"},{"startTime":124.35,"endTime":127.31,"body":"use. Training on those legally acquired"},{"startTime":127.63,"endTime":131.47,"body":"copies? Also fair use. Pirated ones? Not"},{"startTime":131.63,"endTime":135.23,"body":"so much. So the legal green light is there and the practice is"},{"startTime":135.39,"endTime":139.23,"body":"accelerating. So now some reactions. This story blew"},{"startTime":139.39,"endTime":143.15,"body":"up fast and the responses have been raw. A lot of people"},{"startTime":143.31,"endTime":147.07,"body":"are calling it Library of Alexandria 2.0."},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":147.31,"endTime":150.35,"body":"books that survived"},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":150.75,"endTime":154.51,"body":"wars, fires, and centuries of handling are being shredded so an AI"},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":154.75,"endTime":158.04,"body":"can write a better marketing email. Archivists,"},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":158.12,"endTime":161.72,"body":"librarians, and history buffs are furious. Physical"},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":162.12,"endTime":165.8,"body":"copies are artifacts. Once the last few examples of an"},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":165.88,"endTime":169.4,"body":"18th-century botanical text or some obscure"},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":169.56,"endTime":172.76,"body":"foreign-language economics volume are gone, they're gone for"},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":172.92,"endTime":176.52,"body":"good. You can't reprint the unique physical object. You"},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":176.52,"endTime":180.36,"body":"can't hold the paper that someone hundreds of years ago held."},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":180.44,"endTime":184.29,"body":"And there's a deeper fear too. If the original is destroyed and"},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":184.45,"endTime":188.21,"body":"only the AI version remains, what stops subtle rewriting"},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":188.61,"endTime":192.37,"body":"or distortion over time? If you destroy history, you can"},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":192.45,"endTime":196.13,"body":"use AI to rewrite it, one commentator said. Another"},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":196.45,"endTime":199.97,"body":"simply posted, Burning of the Library of Alexandria"},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":200.45,"endTime":204.13,"body":"2.0. Booksellers themselves are conflicted. One told"},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":204.37,"endTime":208.05,"body":"404 Media that his sales jumped from maybe 20 books a week"},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":208.21,"endTime":212.04,"body":"to hundreds. Great for clearing dusty inventory, especially rare"},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":212.2,"endTime":216.04,"body":"and foreign language titles that weren't moving. But he doesn't like the end"},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":216.2,"endTime":219.88,"body":"use. He doesn't like uncommon books getting pulped."},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":220.04,"endTime":223.56,"body":"On the other side, some defend it. The knowledge isn't erased, it's"},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":223.64,"endTime":227.24,"body":"digitized and will power better models. Unused books"},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":227.48,"endTime":231.16,"body":"sitting on shelves forever help no one, they argue. Content"},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":231.56,"endTime":234.52,"body":"lives on, just in a different form. Progress versus heritage."},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":235.54,"endTime":238.66,"body":"That's the tension. I keep coming back to the"},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":238.82,"endTime":242.34,"body":"irreversibility. Scraping the web is one thing."},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":242.66,"endTime":246.26,"body":"Torrenting libraries is another. This feels different because"},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":246.5,"endTime":250.18,"body":"the physical evidence disappears, and because a judge said"},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":250.26,"endTime":253.74,"body":"it's legal, it's not stopping; it's scaling."},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":254.1,"endTime":257.94,"body":"So where does that leave us? Should there be carve-outs for truly rare books?"},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":258.58,"endTime":262.43,"body":"Should AI companies be required to non-destructively scan? scan and return"},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":262.51,"endTime":266.35,"body":"or donate the physical copies? Or is this just the cost of"},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":266.51,"endTime":270.27,"body":"feeding the data hunger? So are we preserving knowledge or"},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":270.51,"endTime":274.35,"body":"erasing the last tangible pieces of it? That's the story for"},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":274.59,"endTime":278.27,"body":"today. Thanks for listening. Stay curious, stay skeptical, and"},{"speaker":"One viral take put it bluntly","startTime":278.27,"endTime":279.39,"body":"I'll catch you in the next one."}]}