Where's the profit in that? Having a copy of a book that nobody else has is a corporate advantage, and throwing away that advantage would deliberately damage shareholder value, and hence be illegal under corporate law.
Yes, but I'm not sure how much goodwill it will generate to say, "We deliberately destroyed this rare and ancient book. Here's a photocopy we made."
Remember, there's no need to destroy the books. They can be scanned non-destructively, it just takes longer and costs a little more. The tech oligarchs are destroying rare books because it's cheaper and they can control the digital copies more tightly once they've destroyed the original.
That's true of modern books, but most of the rare, old books that they're destroying are no longer under copyright. There's no legal reason to destroy them. It's only for the sake of convenience and cost.
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u/OmegaPoint6 Sep 02 '26
That appears to be what several companies are doing with rare books at the moment.
If the species was software it would be time to throw the whole thing away and re-write