🦔AI companies are bulk-buying rare books, scanning them through high-speed machines that cut the spines off, and shredding the originals. A service called ISBNdb facilitates orders of up to a million books and keeps buyers anonymous. Pre-2022 books are premium because they're free of AI-generated text. A federal judge ruled the practice is fair use because eliminating the original means only one copy exists at a time. Anthropic hired the former head of Google Books partnerships to obtain "all the books in the world."
My Take
This got to me. A bookseller told 404 Media that rare books with almost no surviving copies are being fed into this pipeline. Books that survived wars, fires, and centuries of handling are being shredded so an AI can learn to write a better marketing email.
ISBNdb's website literally says "'AI company destroys two million books' is not a headline that generates sympathy," and they still built an entire business around making it happen quietly. They offer NDAs as a feature. They coach clients to call it "digital preservation."
I've covered AI companies scraping the internet, torrenting libraries, and stealing music. This is worse because it's irreversible. You can re-upload a website. You can reprint a bestseller. You can't replace the last three copies of an 18th-century botanical text once someone shreds them for training data. And the judge said it's legal. So it's going to accelerate.
"We shred rare books and offer NDAs so nobody finds out" is a legitimate business model in 2026. What a timeline.
Hedgie🤗
Since some two million people took to the streets to oppose Britain’s illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, new ways have been found to restrict the ability of ordinary citizens to raise their voice against the abuse of governmental and state power.
Recent legislation allows police to ban protests because they are “too noisy” or cause “serious unease”. Disruption has been redefined to now include hindrance to any daily activity. Protests can be barred if they have a “cumulative” impact.
These are all inherent features of protest. The mass demonstrations against Britain’s illegal attack on Iraq were noisy, disruptive and repeated – as have been the marches against Britain’s collusion in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
By judging the legality of protest according to these selective and largely subjective criteria, the state has given the police huge latitude to decide which protests should be criminalised and which allowed.
It is hardly surprising then that the police are currently concentrating their efforts on the anti-genocide marches, which highlight British collusion in Israel’s crimes.
Facial recognition technology – pioneered by Israel against Palestinians – is being rolled out too, normalising the Big Brother, "panopticon" state recently advocated for by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood.
Where is all of this leading? The answer is to a new piece of legislation that was hurried through parliament by Mahmood.
The National Security (State Threats) Act gives the state unprecedented powers to proscribe groups, as it did with Palestine Action, but now without having to claim to have evidence of a terrorist threat.
The home secretary can make such a designation unilaterally, without any parliamentary oversight, simply because he or she claims the group is a “hostile” foreign state actor that poses a threat to national security or public safety.
Mahmood has already done so with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), effectively Iran’s military.
Further, anyone who works with or receives a “material benefit” – defined to include “information” – from a proscribed group can be jailed for up to 14 years. That includes expressing support for the group or sharing information it has provided.
Simply hosting an event where someone expresses support for the group could open one to prosecution, as could posting something on social media that the British state claims is a hostile foreign state “talking point” – whether or not the information is true.
Once again, this is an assault on the most fundamental of Enlightenment values.
In the National Security Act, it matters only who is passing on the information, not what the information is, or whether it is truthful. There is no public interest defence, such as exposure of criminality by the British state or its allies.
There is no exemption for journalists, lawyers, scholars or human rights groups. It will be impossible for them to do the most essential part of their job: digging out information, testing claims from one side against the other’s, and allowing audiences to determine the truth.
Assuming Hamas is declared a hostile foreign actor, as seems all but certain, journalists will be barred from collecting details of Palestinian casualties from Gaza’s health ministry or speak to doctors there. Why? Because the Hamas government runs the health ministry and hospitals.
Worse, it would be impossible for journalists to visit Gaza to investigate Israeli crimes – something that will delight Israel – because such a visit would need to be organised through the Hamas government. To do so would risk 14 years in jail.
The same will be true for reporting from Iran or Russia, if the home secretary so decides.
The only apparent carve-out will be for journalists who get approval from the British government beforehand.
That should ensure that only the most compliant, access-driven journalists, belonging to state and billionaire-owned media, will be able to engage with “hostile” foreign actors – in ways the British state can be sure will best represent its interests.
Under this new law, the search for truth, and potentially the truth itself, will be criminalised.
This is an extract from my latest article Britain's Big Brother state is already here - we just don't realise it yet. Find a link to the rest in the reply post below ⬇️
Israel executed Ahmad in Gaza today.
A single bullet to the head.
He wasn’t a combatant.
He was a World Central Kitchen worker — carrying humanitarian aid.
A father of two.
His youngest child is just one month old.
The combined force of attacks on dissidents in the UK is astonishing.
They really are going to put 80 plus year old ladies in jail for holding placards.
And the National Security (State Threats) Bill is probably the worst of all. You will be jailed if you publish truth on here.
Israel executed little Ahmed today in Gaza.
An Israeli quadcopter drone dropped a bomb on him while he was filling water containers.
A child was killed for trying to get water to survive.
It took a little longer than expected, but we have created a website for people to view the footage collected from Gaza in one place. You no longer have to download the entire archives to see them.
It includes:
64,537 videos
17,905 photos
Ability to download individual videos
Searchable index
Exhaustive sources list (300+ journalists)
Geolocation data
Livemap with minute to minute updates
Victim list
It can be accessed here: https://t.co/s0Se94PXWF
Please share & quote tweet to help this post break out of the twitter algorithm prison.
We will keep adding the rest of the archives to the site, be patient- it is difficult work. Continue to seed the torrents provided, as that is the best way to ensure the footage remains stored in decentalized way.
God bless all those who sacrificed their lives to get this footage out, and everyone invovled in collecting/archiving it.
Join our telegram:
https://t.co/bvcis3b9GT
Follow our backup accounts:
@ZionismExposedx & @IsraelExposedAr
@zeteo_news@mehdirhasan Link to the document 👇 and a message to 🇮🇱
No amount of money, threats, lies, bots, corrupt politicians etc will ever erase what we now know. We see you and you will always be a pariah.
https://t.co/uOM783wgE5
https://t.co/nhieBlrUTi
A teenager holding a white flag shot down from a quadcopter in his own home. A newborn baby shot in the head while breastfeeding inside a tent. These are some of the horrific accounts of Israel’s targeting of Palestinian children from the UN’s latest report. @mehdirhasan shares:
3 judges with the International Criminal Court filed a lawsuit in a US federal court against Trump and his administration, challenging the sanctions against them and calling it a "financial death penalty."
The judges bringing the lawsuit are:
- Kimberly Prost (Canada)
- Solomy Balungi Bossa (Uganda)
- Reine Adelaide Sophie Alapini-Gansou (Benin)
Trump placed sanctions on the judges over their judicial decisions regarding investigations into war crimes by Israel and the US.
The judges argue that the sanctions are extrajudicial measures meant to punish and coerce them. They say the restrictions cut them off from banking, online platforms, travel booking, and sometimes health insurance.
This should be much bigger news.
This is so crazy - and coming to UK soon
Labour are preparing the ground for Reform to dismantle Britain's limited democracy completely
One of Reform's candidates (former UK military officer) spent a year calling for my arrest for reporting on RAF's participation in the Gaza genocide
He'll probably be Defence Secretary in the coming Reform government
Andy Burnham went on a trip to Israel in January 2004, paid for by Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) and Israeli Foreign Ministry
The chair of LFI at time was James Purnell, who has just been appointed Burnham's chief of staff
The lobby has the whole political system sewn up
Meet James Purnell. Andy Burnham's chief of staff.
He supported Iraq invasion; ex chair of Labour Friends of Israel; said that Winter Fuel Allowance and free bus passes should not be sacred; supported PFI, lie-detector tests for benefit claimants.
Next?
https://t.co/8Cnj0hIu62
One of the killings involved a ten day old baby being shot by an Israeli sniper in broad daylight whilst the baby was being breastfed : an independent UN Commission says Israeli authorities and security forces deliberately targeted Palestinian children resulting in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, and war crimes in the occupied West Bank