A new British certification mark will identify books written by humans. In Sydney this month, collectors gathered to handle and trade rare books, some dating back to the fifteenth century. Meanwhile earlier this year, details emerged of an Anthropic project that bought millions of books, cut off their bindings, scanned the pages for AI training and sent the remains to the trash.
What happens to creativity and human, cultural heritage when books are dismantled, their contents extracted for AI training and the physical works discarded, raising profound questions about copyright, ownership and the value we place on human creation?
Human Thought, Machine Theft
On 7 October, the UK Intellectual Property Office registered a certification mark developed by Books By People to identify human-authored books. Five publishers have signed up, with the first certified title expected before the end of the year.[1]
The initiative reflects a growing concern among writers and publishers: the need to distinguish human-created work as AI-generated content becomes more prevalent. Yet recognition is only part of the issue. Authors have spent years developing their knowledge, craft and voice. Their books are the result of intellectual labour, and copyright provides a framework for protecting that work from unauthorised use.
Project Panama brings the consequences of disregarding those rights into sharp focus.
In January, The Washington Post reported on court documents detailing Anthropic's project to acquire millions of physical books, cut off their bindings, scan the pages for AI training and discard the remainders.[2] The books were acquired for their content without acknowledgment, authority or respect really, just to extract and discard.
This is a disturbing model for the treatment of human heritage and creativity. Books created by people, published through an industry built around their labour and protected by copyright becoming inputs for a commercial technology system. The operation extracted their contents while destroying the books themselves.
The question is far beyond copyright and more about the respect for human creation.
The legal proceedings involving Anthropic demonstrate the seriousness of the issue. In 2025, a US federal judge found that using books to train AI could qualify as fair use, while separately ruling that Anthropic's acquisition of pirated digital books infringed copyright. A US$1.5 billion settlement with authors and publishers received final court approval in July 2026.[2]
The distinction between these findings matters, but so does the infringement itself. The unauthorised acquisition of copyrighted books is not made acceptable by the technological purpose for which they are intended. Nor does a legal ruling concerning one use of copyrighted material provide blanket permission to appropriate creative work.
Authors should not have to watch their work absorbed into commercial systems without their rights being respected. Publishers should not have to accept the destruction of books as an ordinary cost of technological development. And society should not treat the dismantling of millions of books as an unremarkable step in building AI.
The destruction of books to extract their contents for AI training is an unacceptable practice. The development of new technology does not justify the infringement of copyright or the wholesale treatment of human-created work as disposable raw material.
What a book carries
From 22 to 24 October, the annual Rare Book Fair brought antiquarian dealers from Australia and beyond to the Glasshouse at the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney. The fair included books dating back to the fifteenth century, alongside first editions, rare maps, prints and ephemera.[3]
The appeal of these books reaches far beyond their printed words. They preserve the thinking of people who lived in different circumstances, the ideas that shaped their times and the stories through which societies have understood themselves. They allow us to encounter knowledge that has travelled across centuries, sometimes surviving periods in which the ideas it contains were neglected, disputed or forgotten.
Books are among the ways humans pass culture between generations. A work of philosophy can influence a writer centuries later. A historical account can change how a society understands its past. A novel can give readers access to experiences far removed from their own. A scientific text can preserve a discovery on which later research depends.
Their cultural contribution cannot always be predicted when they are published. Some books become influential immediately. Others acquire significance much later, when new readers discover something that earlier generations overlooked. The ability to return to these works, study them and interpret them in changing circumstances is part of how culture develops.
This is why preservation matters. Libraries maintain collections so knowledge remains available. Collectors protect works they recognise as significant. Booksellers and antiquarian dealers help identify, authenticate and circulate material that might otherwise be lost from view.
Together, these practices sustain a record of human thought that extends beyond the interests of any single generation.
The rare book trade also demonstrates how much can be carried by an individual volume. Its provenance may connect it to a notable collection or a particular historical period. Annotations may reveal how a reader understood its ideas. Its edition, typography and binding can provide evidence of the conditions in which it was produced.
These are not merely details that increase market value. They contribute to our understanding of how knowledge was created, shared and received. The history of a book is also part of the history of the people who encountered it.
Take the knowledge, erase the work
Project Panama is troubling not only because of the copyright questions it raises, but because of what the process reveals about the treatment of books in the pursuit of AI development.
The operation acquired books, extracted their contents and destroyed the originals. Their physical existence was sacrificed to the purpose for which they had been acquired.
The problem is that books are being treated as a stockpile of material to be harvested for commercial advantage, rather than as works created by people and contributing to a shared cultural inheritance.
The distinction between preserving a book and extracting its text is fundamental. Digitisation can make books more accessible and support research. But those benefits do not require the destruction of the originals. A digital file cannot fully replace the physical book, and the ability to retain its text does not justify discarding the work from which it came.
Nor should the cultural consequences be separated from the rights of creators. When companies use books to develop commercial AI systems, authors and publishers have legitimate interests in how their work is acquired, reproduced and used. The treatment of the books themselves adds another dimension to those concerns. Both the intellectual work and the cultural material through which it survives deserve protection.
The scale of Project Panama makes the issue particularly urgent. This is not a question of whether an individual may discard a book they own. It is about an industrial operation that acquired millions of books for a specific purpose and destroyed them after extracting their contents. The commercial objective does not erase the wider consequences.
We should be asking why this practice was considered acceptable in the first place, why the destruction of the books formed part of the process and what obligations technology companies should have towards the human work on which their systems depend.
The answer cannot be that anything useful to AI is fair game. Copyright must be respected, creators must be protected, and the destruction of books for extraction must stop. We must be clear about what is at stake. Books are not simply collections of words waiting to be put to another use. They are how people record discoveries, share experiences, challenge power, preserve knowledge and imagine different futures. Their influence often extends beyond the original purpose for which they were written. Their value to culture cannot be calculated solely by the immediate utility of their contents.
What We Owe the Future
The responsibility to protect books belongs but is not limited to authors, publishers, libraries, collectors, institutions and the companies that seek to use their work. It requires respect for copyright, meaningful protection for creators and a clear refusal to treat cultural works as disposable inputs for commercial technology.
As collectors gathered in Sydney this October, the books available have survived centuries of change and they remain because people chose to preserve them. Protecting them is not an obstacle to progress. It is a responsibility to culture itself.
Sources
[1] The Bookseller, UK's first human-authored book certification mark registered, 7 October 2026.
[2] Sydney Rare Book Fair 2026, 22–24 October, State Library of New South Wales.
[3] The Washington Post, Inside an AI start-up's plan to scan and dispose of millions of books, 27 January 2026.
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