Overview
- Late July 2026 reporting and viral social posts renewed attention to a pipeline in which intermediaries arrange anonymous bulk buys of secondhand books for AI training.
- A June 2025 federal ruling by Judge William Alsup held that converting lawfully purchased print books into internal digital copies for model training can be fair use, and Anthropic separately paid roughly $1.5 billion to settle claims over pirated digital books in July 2026.
- Court filings show Anthropic ran a large-scale physical scanning program called Project Panama, hired Tom Turvey to source volumes, and used high-speed destructive workflows that cut bindings before industrial scanning.
- Vendors such as ISBNdb now market services that can source from thousands up to one million ISBN-identified titles and offer nondisclosure agreements, while used- and rare-booksellers report unusual bulk orders for niche and out-of-print titles.
- Reporting has not produced named, title-level proof that unique last-copy editions were destroyed, but the combination of a legal precedent, vendor offers that promote destruction, and no federal preservation guidance raises pressure for firms to adopt non-destructive scanning, for libraries to act, and for possible regulatory or industry responses.