They also weren't destroying rare books. They were buying in-print books from major retailers, which means that while yes, that is environmentally wasteful, it's not actually destroying books in the classical destruction of knowledge sense since the manufacturer will just print another one if there's demand for it.

Yeah, this is on the way of being a win. In this case they actually bought the books, which has been one of the biggest issues with LLMs. There's certainly more discussion to be had around how they use the materials in the end, but this is a step in the right direction.

Ex-wife and I had a room in the trailer house dedicated to books, one might have even called it a library. Seriously, cheap bookshelves, all 4 walls, stuffed. Now I have a stack on a small shelf.

Just can't use books anymore. I can choose any of 1,000 epubs on my crappy Android tablet, read in the dark.

No, it was after their lawyers told them that was illegal and would cause them to lose a fair use copyright claim.

Because they want earth. The poors are the ones going to space to work the mines, I'm sure of it. Not sure why anyone thinks they're the ones going to space to live.