The US has that too with the library of Congress.

Yup. All because non-destructive scanning is slightly slower and more expensive.

I don't believe it's hyperbole to say the money comes from sociopaths. Sociopaths assume everyone is in it for themselves, they assume everyone else thinks like this, that it's just how people do stuff.

Right, but they could keep them in a private Library. Shoot, throw them in a tote and stick them in a closet. Deliberately destroying rare books isn't just regular profit motivated evil, it's over the top. I'd say cartoonishly evil if it didn't piss me off so bad. Seriously, are they going to drown bags of puppies next? Burn down an orphanage?

Not only that...

They use this fucking incredible argument:

"We destroy the book because when we scan it - that's a new copy. If we destroy the oroginal - only one copy (the scan) remains"

As if the model doesn't get copied over and rented out in bajillions of instances. Its product - by all AI service ToS's made free to use and copy royalty free (unlike say, every single library in this world, which universally forbid the photocopying of lent out books). Meaning - copyright infringement of the worst kind in any sane interpretation. Shame this world is insane.

Such an incredible spin on the rules. Using them as the excuse to go against the core cultural, civilizational and moral imperative of archiving, while going against the spirit of the concept of what copyright was initially made to do - give authors the path to a livelihood from their work and denying it to parasites such as publishers.

Copyright truly is dead. Indeed - the global copyright rules were on their last legs before AI and used only as anti-consumer protection for publishers (not authors!), but now they're a sinked ship - the mask is off. It's all plainly visible what they're here to do now.

It’s a bit interesting thinking about Fahrenheit 451 in this new twist of reality.

that combined with the AI driven panopticon we're currently self imposing on ourselves makes it clear that fahrenheit 451; animal farm; and 1984 were instruction manuals.

So...?