{
  "id": 10604291,
  "title": "AI gives forgotten books a new lease of life",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/29/ai-gives-forgotten-books-a-new-lease-of-life",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-09-29T03:49:14.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Al Majalla English",
    "slug": "al-majalla-english",
    "url": "https://en.majalla.com/node/333279/science-technology/ai-gives-forgotten-books-new-lease-life"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "In a second-hand bookshop in Badalona, near Barcelona, Marcel Font observed something unusual. A Canadian company had started purchasing books that had been sitting on shelves for years, primarily non-fiction Catalan-language works. Simultaneously, Michael Strötter, a German bookseller, experienced a similar pattern, receiving orders from Zoom Books, a Canadian firm that specializes in selling and reusing second-hand books.\n\nThese orders appeared to be automated, with hundreds of books requested in quick succession. The companies behind these purchases have denied buying books specifically for AI training, but their refusal to disclose client identities has raised suspicions among booksellers. Anthropic, a developer of an AI language model, was involved in a copyright lawsuit where documents revealed they had purchased millions of books and employed contractors to dismantle, scan, and convert them into digital files for training purposes.\n\nThe legal question surrounding this practice is complex. While purchasing and destroying a physical copy may not inherently make it lawful for AI training under US law, fair use has been considered in specific cases. In Anthropic's case, a federal judge ruled that converting legally purchased books into internal digital copies could fall under fair use, as long as the resulting single digital copy was not distributed publicly. However, this does not extend to unlawfully obtained books or covers the extensive practices of AI companies like Zoom Books. The US Copyright Office has cautioned against oversimplifying fair use to a single rule for AI training, urging a case-by-case assessment based on factors such as the nature of the works, the acquisition method, the purpose of use, and the impact on the original market.",
  "summary": "AI gives forgotten books a new lease of life newspress_en Tue, 09/29/2026 - 04:49 Science & Technology In a modest second-hand bookshop in Badalona, near Barcelona, Marcel Font began to notice something he had never seen before. A Canadian company had begun buying books that had languished on shelves for years, many of them non-fiction Catalan-language works. The orders sometimes came only…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 2,
    "also_reported_by": [
      {
        "outlet": "Al Majalla English",
        "title": "How AI is giving forgotten books a new lease of life",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/29/how-ai-is-giving-forgotten-books-a-new-lease-of-life",
        "published": "2026-09-29T03:49:14.000Z"
      }
    ]
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}