Secondhand book sales are booming. Is it because of AI?

Independent booksellers worldwide are experiencing unusual bulk purchases of secondhand books, suspected to be for AI training datasets. A 2025 US court ruling allowed AI firm Anthropic to use purchased books for training through 'destructive scanning' (removing spines for rapid digitization then recycling), sparking debate about copyright, preservation, and the ethics of destroying books to feed language models.

Teaching:
• Use destructive scanning as metaphor for practice approaches that dismantle structure to extract information versus embodied integration that preserves the whole system
• Frame attention training through the lens of data acquisition: are students collecting postures or developing literacy in the underlying grammar of movement
• Explore the difference between transformative use (court's language) and transformation (what practice actually does to practitioners over time)
• Discuss preservation versus utility in practice: which elements of tradition are rare editions worth protecting versus mass-market copies ready for recycling

Writing seeds:
• Essay comparing AI training on destroyed books to how students consume yoga content online: extracting data points versus developing embodied systems literacy
• Piece on what gets lost when practice is 'destructively scanned' through apps, videos, and fragmented instruction versus transmitted as integrated whole
• Post exploring Project Panama as metaphor for modern yoga's relationship to tradition: buying up source texts, extracting patterns, discarding the physical container
• Reflection on the bookseller's dilemma (profit versus preservation) as parallel to teaching choices: which students/approaches feed the practice forward versus just extract value

Idea map:
• Connects to systems literacy: the difference between having all the data and understanding the system; AI has book content but not the embodied experience of reading
• Extends embodiment theme: books as physical objects versus digitized text mirrors practice as lived experience versus collected information about poses
• Relates to attention economy: bulk purchasing books for training data reflects how attention itself becomes raw material for extraction rather than cultivation
• Links to practice as method: transformative use (legal term) versus actual transformation through repeated embodied engagement with source material

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp3rprx2wl4o?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss