--- title: The Vanishing Page: AI Firms Scan Then Destroy Rare Book... description: AI companies, including Anthropic through its internal 'Project Panama,' are bulk-purchasing physical books — including rare and out-of-print editions —... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/the-vanishing-page-ai-firms-scan-then-destroy-rare-book-editions-g6gbdbxtc twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: The Vanishing Page: AI Firms Scan Then Destroy Rare Book Editions | daily.dev og:description: AI companies, including Anthropic through its internal 'Project Panama,' are bulk-purchasing physical books — including rare and out-of-print editions —... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-vanishing-page-ai-firms-scan-then-destroy-rare-book-editions-g6gbdbxtc og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/g6GBDBxTc.png og:image:alt: The Vanishing Page: AI Firms Scan Then Destroy Rare Book Editions og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # The Vanishing Page: AI Firms Scan Then Destroy Rare Book Editions **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 6 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary AI companies, including Anthropic through its internal 'Project Panama,' are bulk-purchasing physical books — including rare and out-of-print editions — cutting their spines, scanning the pages with industrial equipment, and then destroying the originals. The practice targets pre-2022 books to avoid AI-generated content contamination. A federal judge ruled this constitutes fair use since only one copy (digital) exists at a time. Brokers like ISBNdb facilitate anonymous bulk orders of up to one million volumes. Booksellers in Europe have reported unusual bulk orders for niche academic titles. Used-book dealers are raising concerns that rare editions with few surviving copies are being permanently removed from circulation, with some commentators drawing parallels to Orwell's 1984. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Is it legal for AI companies to destroy physical books after scanning them for training data? Yes, according to a June 2025 ruling by U.S. District Judge William Alsup in Bartz v. Anthropic, digitizing legally purchased print books and destroying the physical originals qualifies as fair use, since the process replaces print copies with digital versions without creating additional copies or redistributing them. Anthropic separately settled related claims involving pirated digital books for $1.5 billion. _Following how copyright rulings reshape what data trains AI models matters for anyone building on these systems, a topic daily.dev keeps developers current on._ ### What was Anthropic's Project Panama? Project Panama was an internal Anthropic effort, started in early 2024, described in an internal document as an attempt to 'destructively scan all the books in the world.' Anthropic hired Tom Turvey, former head of partnerships for Google Books, and worked with sellers like Better World Books, with vendor proposals covering 500,000 to two million books converted over six months using hydraulic cutting machines and industrial scanners. _Developers tracking how AI labs source training data can follow these disclosures on daily.dev._ ### Why do AI companies prefer pre-2022 books for training data? Pre-2022 books are preferred because they predate widespread AI-generated content, making them free of AI-generated text that could contaminate training data with synthetic material. Brokers such as ISBNdb market this directly, stating that print books from the pre-LLM era represent uncontaminated training data, and facilitate bulk anonymous orders ranging from 1,000 to one million books. _Anyone evaluating data quality and provenance for model training can follow this discussion on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [AI companies destroy rare and non recoverable physical books](https://daily.dev/posts/ai-companies-destroy-rare-and-non-recoverable-physical-books-kdfpi79uv) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [AI Book Scanning: Just What Is A Rare Book?](https://daily.dev/posts/ai-book-scanning-just-what-is-a-rare-book--4livbix9o) · Hackaday · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [AI firms are buying old books for slop-free training data](https://daily.dev/posts/ai-firms-are-buying-old-books-for-slop-free-training-data-t6hwh6vfl) · The Next Web · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#machine-learning](https://daily.dev/tags/machine-learning), [#data-science](https://daily.dev/tags/data-science), [#llm](https://daily.dev/tags/llm), [#anthropic](https://daily.dev/tags/anthropic) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-vanishing-page-ai-firms-scan-then-destroy-rare-book-editions-g6gbdbxtc) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"The Vanishing Page: AI Firms Scan Then Destroy Rare Book Editions","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-vanishing-page-ai-firms-scan-then-destroy-rare-book-editions-g6gbdbxtc","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-vanishing-page-ai-firms-scan-then-destroy-rare-book-editions-g6gbdbxtc"},"datePublished":"2026-08-02T13:04:18.121Z","dateModified":"2026-09-13T18:42:09.339Z","description":"AI companies, including Anthropic through its internal 'Project Panama,' are bulk-purchasing physical books — including rare and out-of-print editions —...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/d261d9988f7b87911fddfa207febfc44?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/d261d9988f7b87911fddfa207febfc44?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Hacker News","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Hacker News","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/hn","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-vanishing-page-ai-firms-scan-then-destroy-rare-book-editions-g6gbdbxtc","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"machine-learning,data-science,llm,anthropic","timeRequired":"PT6M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Hacker News","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"The Vanishing Page: AI Firms Scan Then Destroy Rare Book Editions"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-vanishing-page-ai-firms-scan-then-destroy-rare-book-editions-g6gbdbxtc#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"Is it legal for AI companies to destroy physical books after scanning them for training data?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Yes, according to a June 2025 ruling by U.S. District Judge William Alsup in Bartz v. 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