[REVISION HISTORY]

AI companies accused of destructive book scanning

Updated 13 times since CLSTR started tracking revisions of this situation.

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2026-09-25 07:07 UTC → 2026-10-19 01:40 UTC · added ~~removed~~

Concerns have emerged regarding the practice of ‘destructive scanning’ used to acquire training data for artificial intelligence. Initially, Australian booksellers and rare-book experts reported that the Canadian company Zoom Books was making large, irregular orders for niche, decades-old titles, expressing concern that these books were being destroyed after digitization. Scrutiny has since expanded to the AI developer Anthropic. Court documents regarding an internal initiative called ‘Project Panama’ suggest the company has been acquiring millions of secondhand and out-of-print books to facilitate digital data collection. Reports indicate that Anthropic uses a ‘scan-and-destroy’ method to train its Claude AI, where book spines are slit and pages are trimmed to meet scanning formats, rendering them unusable. An internal memo allegedly describes the objective as ‘destructively scanning all the books in the world.’ Investigations have also identified a specialized system, ‘Nippan Loader,’ used to acquire and digitize Japanese books. Anthropic reportedly contracted with Nippan, Japan’s largest book wholesaler, to purchase large quantities of physical books for shredding and scanning. This has coincided with a surge in orders for niche professional texts in Japan, with trade data suggesting over 50 tons of Japanese books have been exported to the United States. The Japan Book Publishers Association has formally requested an explanation from Nippan, as the situation sparks debate over whether such practices constitute ‘unreasonable harm’ to copyright holders. ~~In the legal sphere,~~ Investigations by 404 Media have expanded the ~~case~~ scope of ~~Bartz vs. Anthropic resulted in~~ these allegations to Amazon. Using an Apple AirTag to track a ~~$1.5 billion settlement regarding the use~~ shipment of ~~copyrighted books. While a court ruled that using legally acquired books for AI training constitutes ‘fair use,’ it explicitly excluded pirated copies from this classification.~~ 1,000 books, investigators located an Amazon warehouse in Las Vegas (VGT3) where workers reportedly received large shipments to strip ISBN barcodes and covers before destruction.

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