The Vanishing Page: AI Firms Scan Then Destroy Rare Book Editions

AI companies are purchasing physical books in bulk, including rare and out-of-print titles, then using high-speed machines to cut the spines and scan the pages before disposing of the originals, according to court documents and industry reports.

The process targets pre-2022 books preferred as free of AI-generated content, with services facilitating anonymous bulk orders of up to one million volumes.

A federal judge ruled the digitization of purchased books, accompanied by destruction of the physical copies, qualifies as fair use. Anthropic previously conducted a large-scale version of the practice under an internal effort known as Project Panama.

The Practice and Legal Background

The details resurfaced again after a July 26, 2026, post by the X account @HedgieMarkets described the activity, citing reports of rare books with few surviving copies entering the pipeline.

🦔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… pic.twitter.com/0YPd8N2oi5

— Hedgie (@HedgieMarkets) July 27, 2026

The post referenced a bookseller’s account to 404 Media and statements from ISBNdb, a company that maintains a large book database and now brokers high-volume acquisitions for AI clients.

In a June 2025 ruling in Bartz v. Anthropic, U.S. District Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California held that digitizing legally purchased print books and using the resulting digital copies to train large language models was fair use. The judge noted that the process replaced the print copies with digital versions without adding new copies or redistributing them. Anthropic later settled related claims involving pirated digital books for $1.5 billion.

Anthropic’s Project Panama