AI companies are buying, scanning, and destroying physical books—Anna’s Archive urges volunteers to scan rare books now

AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

Anthropic’s “Project Panama” spent tens of millions of dollars buying millions of paper books, scanning them to train Claude, then destroying them—cheaper than lossless scanning and it keeps the data away from competitors. The practice surfaced in a $1.5 billion copyright settlement. Anna’s Archive volunteer “u” argues this permanently locks knowledge inside private servers and calls on volunteers worldwide to scan and upload materials before they vanish. Small uploads earn lifetime membership; large-scale efforts can get scanning costs covered. The post doesn’t provide a verified title list or independent count of destroyed books, so treat the “millions” figure with caution, but the incentive structure is worth paying attention to.

Why it matters: Project Panama surfaced in a $1.5B copyright settlement, with concrete dollar figures and business logic behind the buy-scan-destroy pipeline—this isn't rumor. The ding is sourcing: it's an Anna's Archive volunteer post, not a primary legal filing. I'm scoring 82 and waiting f...