{"slug": "australian-booksellers-warn-rare-titles-destroyed-to-train-ai-models", "title": "Australian Booksellers Warn Rare Titles Destroyed to Train AI Models", "summary": "Australian rare book sellers report bulk, price-insensitive orders from Canadian book recycler Zoom Books, raising fears their stock is being scanned and destroyed to train AI models. The practice, known as 'destructive scanning,' was exposed in a US lawsuit against Anthropic, which denies buying from Zoom Books. Booksellers express concern over the loss of unique cultural artifacts, though some see a silver lining for unwanted stock.", "body_md": "**August 2, 2026, (Inside AI)** — Australian rare book sellers are sounding an alarm after a wave of unusual bulk orders raised fears that their stock is being fed into the destructive data pipelines of generative AI companies. Multiple vendors confirmed to Guardian Australia that they received large, price-insensitive orders from a Canadian firm called Zoom Books, a self-described book recycler, through online marketplaces like Abebooks and Biblio. The orders, which included obscure and decades-old titles, have sparked concerns that the books are being scanned and destroyed to train large language models, a practice recently exposed in a US lawsuit against Anthropic.\n\nThe controversy stems from a copyright case where unsealed court files revealed Anthropic engaged in \"destructive scanning\"—slicing spines off physical books for efficient digitization, then pulping the remains. A judge ruled this lawful as \"transformative use\" under US copyright law. While Anthropic denies buying from Zoom Books, the industry acknowledges that sourcing books is a common AI training method. The Australian booksellers’ experience suggests intermediaries may be scaling up to meet demand.\n\nDelfina Manor, who runs Good Reading Secondhand Books in Benalla, Victoria, said she received orders from Zoom Books in May for about 30-40 books, paid in advance with no quibbling over postage. The volume overwhelmed her small operation. John Sainsbury of Melbourne’s Sainsburys Books confirmed similar orders around the same time, describing them as price-insensitive and seemingly random—niche titles, \"bottom-end\" stock, sometimes decades old. One order mixed a 1970s soil mechanics manual with a New Zealand cycling book, an Australian poetry collection, and a local history of Hawthorn. The poetry book, priced at $9, had sat unsold for 20 years.\n\nTim White, owner of Books for Cooks and a stallholder at the Melbourne Rare Book Fair, highlighted the tension between mass-market and rare items. \"If it's a $20 book of which there's ... 500,000 copies in Australia, I wouldn't cry,\" he said. \"I'd have different issues around copyright.\" But for unique, storytelling objects, destruction is \"horrific.\" White emphasized that rare booksellers handle artifacts with stories beyond their text, connecting food and society to reveal what it means to be human.\n\nNot all sellers are distraught. Nick Dawes of Grant's Bookshop, with an estimated 500,000 books in warehouses, sees a double-edged sword. \"If somebody wanted to come and buy all my books and cut them up, well ... I'd be unhappy at one level, but I'd be happy at another,\" he said. But he draws the line at destroying the only known copy. The practice of destroying books for profit isn't new—some vendors slice rare books to sell illustration plates individually. Gwenyth Todd of Chatelaine Books calls it \"physically abhorrent\" and screens buyers to prevent books going \"to the wrong home.\"\n\n## Anthropic’s Defense and Industry-Wide Practices\n\nAn Anthropic spokesperson stated the company has never bought from Zoom Books and does not destroy rare or antiquarian books. \"Sourcing books is a widely used approach for training large language models across the AI industry,\" the spokesperson said, noting procurement from mainstream commercial markets. Zoom Books’ co-founder, Manroop Gill, said in a LinkedIn post that the company has been \"expanding aggressively.\" A Zoom Books spokesperson told Guardian Australia: \"We acquire secondhand books and resell them intact. We do not digitize books. Our priority is always reuse, and when a book can no longer be rehomed, it is responsibly recycled.\" The company declined to disclose if it sells intact books to AI firms for destructive scanning, citing confidentiality.\n\nThe legal foundation for destructive scanning rests on the transformative use doctrine, as seen in the Anthropic case. This ruling aligns with broader debates over AI training data and copyright, where fair use defenses are being tested. A [recent paper on arXiv](https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.14207) explores how AI models rely on large-scale text corpora, often sourced from books, raising questions about consent and compensation. The Australian booksellers’ experience underscores the opaque supply chains that feed these datasets, with intermediaries like Zoom Books potentially bridging the gap between secondhand markets and AI labs.\n\n## Preservationists Fear Irreversible Cultural Loss\n\nFor rare book experts, the threat extends beyond individual titles to cultural memory. Books as physical objects carry provenance, marginalia, and historical context that digital copies cannot replicate. The Melbourne Rare Book Fair, where White exhibited, showcases items valued for their materiality. The fear is that automated bulk buying could inadvertently scoop up irreplaceable works, especially from generalist sellers who may not recognize a book’s rarity. While high-end specialists seem untouched, the random nature of the orders suggests algorithms are targeting low-cost, long-tail inventory—precisely the kind where hidden gems might lurk.\n\nThe industry is now grappling with how to balance the economic lifeline of bulk sales against the ethical duty to preserve. Some sellers are considering stricter vetting of buyers, though the anonymity of online platforms complicates this. As AI training demands grow, the tension between data hunger and cultural stewardship is likely to intensify. For now, Australian booksellers are left wondering if the books they ship overseas will end up as training tokens or remain intact on some distant shelf.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/australian-booksellers-warn-rare-titles-destroyed-to-train-ai-models", "canonical_source": "https://insideai.news/news/ai-policy-and-regulation/australian-booksellers-warn-rare-titles-destroyed-to-train-ai-models/6784/", "published_at": "2026-08-01 21:07:18+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-01 21:17:29.789337+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-ethics", "ai-policy"], "entities": ["Zoom Books", "Anthropic", "Guardian Australia", "Delfina Manor", "John Sainsbury", "Tim White", "Nick Dawes", "Manroop Gill"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/australian-booksellers-warn-rare-titles-destroyed-to-train-ai-models", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/australian-booksellers-warn-rare-titles-destroyed-to-train-ai-models.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/australian-booksellers-warn-rare-titles-destroyed-to-train-ai-models.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/australian-booksellers-warn-rare-titles-destroyed-to-train-ai-models.jsonld"}}