It’s ugly. When there are still only some copies available of a certain book and they are all being sold the knowledge is gone. Let alone when it’s the only copy remaining.
That is of course not totally true, the copies are in private digital stores.
But for general public the knowledge is gone. Someone researching let’s say the history of a little village won’t be able to catch it.
This happens as well in current private collections. The physical book gets stored in a private book collection. But many also get out by the years when people are moving or die.
The amount of companies doing this is the real harm. There will be many companies running this process. It is absolutely not comparable to a single book collection getting burned in a house fire or being thrown away instead of donated to a second hand store.
It might feel for some as a not really big issue but actually it is in time.
If you take the only remaining copy of book X and take it home to digitally scan it, then destroy the book and never share the scan, what has been lost?
Nothing? What's the difference of the vast rare books in private collections never scanned or public? Ever been to the rare book conference? None of those are public.
This mindset is so strange to me. Destroying books is anathema? These are niche subjects for books that may only have a few copies in the world. This knowledge should be digitized so it can be available and shared for thousands of years.
Better yet, why not raise prices by 10x for these online AI orders? Then again, I suppose you don’t really run a book shop in 2026 because you want to make money.
If the book really is difficult to come by I don't know that I'd prefer it to only survive as a statistical approximation that can be mostly retrieved if you utter the correct incantation. The AI trainers don't care about the book. It's just a commodified stream of words.
Most people do not support the destruction of books - it seems like the issue in both cases is copyright forcing the destruction and non-release of the scan.
They don't have to destroy the books to scan them. There are techniques for doing it non-destructively, but they're slower and more expensive. It's cheaper to cut the spines off and drop the stack of papers on a flatbed scanner with a paper feeder.
Ok, but that's not what's happening. They are destroying the copies and not making them available to be shared. They are using them to increase the value of their business.
> A Canadian buyer was sending multiple book orders to Book Haven in Newtown, sometimes minutes apart, for niche texts on New Zealand specific subjects.
Canada is one of the few “western” countries without annoying customs duty/tariff requirements to ship to by post these days. US is a mess, and UK/Europe are going in the same direction.
All the offense is that books are being destroyed. They're being destroyed b/c that's slicing off the binding to get flat pages is most convenient way to scan them. But ... could AI firms sidestep all the vitriol by paying to rebind the guillotined pages? I have no experience with such things, but if they were willing get the machines to do paperback thermal bindings (even if they sliced open a hardcover) and then donate or resell the books back into the marketplace, a lot of the "destroying rare books" emotions
could be avoided.
2) US copyright law (currently, sorta, kinda) requires that only one copy of the book you purchased exist. If you scan it, you must destroy the other copy.
One copy! A single copy of the book is destroyed and physically inaccessible.
The same effect would be if a hoarder purchased the book and never sold it or showed it to another soul. Same effect if a toddler purchased it, dropped it in their spaghetti bowl, and tore it apart.
But a copy of a book is a copy of a book! Books were designed for multiple copies being printed. Perhaps we recall Gutenberg and that whole controversy of easy printing from a press. So, the thing getting people all in a tizzy is that a single copy of a book that has, perhaps, become rare in 2026, a single copy that languished on a shelf somewhere, is being purchased and consumed.
Honestly, folks, books are really in no danger here. If you know any rare books that are irreplaceable, and with only one extant copy, just buy it yourself. For God's sake! Not rocket science.
For those wondering why she's wearing wool and gloves indoors - New Zealanders typically can't afford electric heating, and wear woolen clothing in doors to to make up for this, when they can't burn firewood or coal.
as the country grapples with record numbers of citizens leaving the country because of a weak economy, high living costs and high unemployment.
More than 60% of those moved to Australia, where average weekly incomes are higher and New Zealand citizens have work and residency rights.
The spokesperson did not elaborate on when the family arrived in Australia nor what kind of work they were doing, but noted it was not unusual for former leaders to spend time overseas after leaving office.
Often kiwis can afford it but just choose not to. My own parents are well off and yet still have an absolutely freezing house all winter, it drives me crazy. Just put on a sweater, and another one over that, and a blanket....
Electricity was several times more expensive than in the US when we were there, and houses not insulated well. Sock hats and fingerless wool gloves it is.
Imagine thinking that wearing a sweater in wintertime means you're poor. Couldn't be me.
The gloves are a special kind made of thermal material for people with Raynaud's disease, where narrowing of the blood vessels reduces circulation in cold temperatures.
Of course they have very low wealth inequality so they don’t have trillionaires at all which some people may see as a problem. In fact remarkably despite the median wealth of NZ being so much higher than the USA they have a lower average wealth per capita.
They just spread the wealth around making the middle class 3x richer.
Wikipedia's (UBS') US figure ($69k) is probably wrong? US median household wealth is ~$193k[1]. I don't think there's a way to square claimed median individual wealth of $69k with that? Even taking into account children (22% population) and assuming 2 adults/household (more favorable to the math than the real 1.2-1.4 figure). I can't find anything on UBS' methodology, just the short 1.5 page paper.
I don't have an explanation for this but I did note that the 2023 UBS report had US Median Wealth per adult at $107K[1].
I wonder if there is a per adult vs per person vs per working person difference in the measurement or something like that?
Edit: I've dug into this more, and the closest thing I can come up with for an explanation is that UBS changed its model for 2026 to "normalize household debt" in order to make it more comparable across countries. There doesn't seem to be sufficient information to explain how that change caused such a radical change.
Emphasis mine. US median household is 2.53 persons [1]. 193/2.53 = 76k, which is within spitting distance of the 69k per person listed. The wikipedia is median wealth per capita
That is of course not totally true, the copies are in private digital stores.
But for general public the knowledge is gone. Someone researching let’s say the history of a little village won’t be able to catch it.
This happens as well in current private collections. The physical book gets stored in a private book collection. But many also get out by the years when people are moving or die.
The amount of companies doing this is the real harm. There will be many companies running this process. It is absolutely not comparable to a single book collection getting burned in a house fire or being thrown away instead of donated to a second hand store.
It might feel for some as a not really big issue but actually it is in time.
Better yet, why not raise prices by 10x for these online AI orders? Then again, I suppose you don’t really run a book shop in 2026 because you want to make money.
And I bet it’s more likely that in 100 years you can read a book printed nowadays than you can read data digitized nowadays.
Legally they can't, they would immediately land in copyright claim hell.
Canada is one of the few “western” countries without annoying customs duty/tariff requirements to ship to by post these days. US is a mess, and UK/Europe are going in the same direction.
1) It's easier to scan.
2) US copyright law (currently, sorta, kinda) requires that only one copy of the book you purchased exist. If you scan it, you must destroy the other copy.
I can morn paper but it's not like the contents are being lost.
Rumors of rare books being destroyed would be the bad part of this but if "rare" is the tourist guide to a local cave why should we care?
Feels alot like the water argument
Unless they're sharing the scans publicly or with the Internet Archive or equivalent, they are being lost.
The same effect would be if a hoarder purchased the book and never sold it or showed it to another soul. Same effect if a toddler purchased it, dropped it in their spaghetti bowl, and tore it apart.
But a copy of a book is a copy of a book! Books were designed for multiple copies being printed. Perhaps we recall Gutenberg and that whole controversy of easy printing from a press. So, the thing getting people all in a tizzy is that a single copy of a book that has, perhaps, become rare in 2026, a single copy that languished on a shelf somewhere, is being purchased and consumed.
Honestly, folks, books are really in no danger here. If you know any rare books that are irreplaceable, and with only one extant copy, just buy it yourself. For God's sake! Not rocket science.
Or she just gets cold. My daughter wears those kind of gloves all winter regardless of how warm we heat the house.
Because she’s so reviled by New Zealanders she left NZ.
New Zealand has always been a place people with talent leave (and often return to upon retirement or making a fortune).
eg: Ernest left in his post grad years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Rutherford
The gloves are a special kind made of thermal material for people with Raynaud's disease, where narrowing of the blood vessels reduces circulation in cold temperatures.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe...
Of course they have very low wealth inequality so they don’t have trillionaires at all which some people may see as a problem. In fact remarkably despite the median wealth of NZ being so much higher than the USA they have a lower average wealth per capita.
They just spread the wealth around making the middle class 3x richer.
[1]: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scfindex.htm
I wonder if there is a per adult vs per person vs per working person difference in the measurement or something like that?
Edit: I've dug into this more, and the closest thing I can come up with for an explanation is that UBS changed its model for 2026 to "normalize household debt" in order to make it more comparable across countries. There doesn't seem to be sufficient information to explain how that change caused such a radical change.
[1]https://web.archive.org/web/20230815103944/https://www.ubs.c...
Emphasis mine. US median household is 2.53 persons [1]. 193/2.53 = 76k, which is within spitting distance of the 69k per person listed. The wikipedia is median wealth per capita
[1] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/HCN010222*