The reminder comes from Project Panama, the 2024 operation in which Anthropic spent tens of millions acquiring second-hand books by the million. Workers sliced off spines, fed loose pages through industrial scanners, and recycled the paper once the text was digitized. A US judge later ruled the conversion was legitimate, noting Anthropic had bought the copies “fair and square.” This summer, UK and Irish booksellers report fresh bulk orders for obscure and out-of-print titles from unclear buyers — prompting speculation of another AI training run, though Anthropic denies targeting rare books.
Why AI Companies Want What Streaming Erased
The contrast is stark. Tech’s most advanced labs are racing to physically own cultural artifacts at the very moment consumers have surrendered ownership almost entirely. Sony has confirmed that newly released PlayStation games will go digital-only from January 2028, and its terms describe those purchases as licences rather than property. Films vanish from streaming platforms, television soundtracks swap when music rights lapse, and entire libraries remain tethered to the companies hosting them.
Anthropic could dismantle its books because it owned them. Most digital “buys” grant no such right — they are personal licences that cannot be transferred, resold, or inherited. The same industry pushing us toward subscription models is, behind closed doors, acquiring physical media precisely because ownership provides control that licences never will.
The Hidden Cost of Passive Consumption
Streaming has trained a generation to consume passively. Open Netflix with no film in mind, settle on whatever was just added. Spotify finishes one record and auto-queues another. Hours pass with content barely chosen and rarely remembered. Physical media disrupts that autopilot — choosing a book, record, or disc gives it a place in the room and another chance to draw you back.
A book spends more time closed than open, yet it has not vanished. It sits beside the bed, travels in a bag, catches the eye from across the room. A title saved on an app disappears into a list. Visible books, research shows, are selected more often and lead readers toward subjects they never intended to explore. Umberto Eco regarded his vast library as a record of everything left to discover — what Nassim Nicholas Taleb later termed the “anti-library.”
What the Research Actually Shows About Physical Media
A 2019 study published in Social Science Research analysed roughly 160,000 adults across 31 societies. Those raised with home libraries developed stronger literacy, numeracy, and digital problem-solving skills — even after controlling for parental education, personal education, occupation, and current reading habits. The study cannot prove books caused those differences, but it suggests growing up where reading is visible and accessible leaves measurable effects well into adulthood.
Vinyl culture researchers have connected the format’s resurgence to a blend of ritual, artwork, and physical involvement. Taking a record from its sleeve, lowering the needle, flipping it after one side — these gestures give music a presence that streaming flattens. Playing a Blu-ray feels like making an appointment with a film. Opening a streaming service often means deciding to watch before deciding what.
Ownership, Survival, and Inheritance
Physical media has real limits. It costs money, occupies space, and deteriorates. Players become obsolete, discs get damaged, and many modern games require downloads or functioning servers despite arriving in a box. But a physical copy can be lent, sold, donated, or inherited. It preserves a particular cut, soundtrack, set of liner notes, or translation. Copies spread across thousands of homes give a work more chances of surviving after a company decides it no longer belongs in a catalogue.
That survival question is not abstract. Streaming companies have made no promise to preserve everything consumers paid to access. A subscription might have delivered the same work, but it could never have carried a grandfather’s annotated copy to the next generation. Margin notes preserve arguments once had with oneself. Inscriptions recall who gave a book and where the recipient was when it arrived.
What Happens Next
Expect the AI book-buying story to intensify. As models demand ever more training data, scarce and out-of-print titles become strategic assets — and booksellers will keep flagging suspicious bulk orders. Regulators may eventually scrutinize whether digitizing legally purchased copies for commercial AI training stretches fair use beyond its intended bounds, regardless of what one judge ruled.
For consumers, the calculation is shifting. Sony’s 2028 digital-only deadline for PlayStation releases marks a clear boundary: after that point, “owning” a new game will mean holding a licence, not a disc. Anyone who values permanence — the ability to lend, inherit, or simply keep something on a shelf — should think hard about what they buy now and in what format. The AI labs have already made their choice. The rest of us still have a window.
— Lucas Berg, culture desk, AXO News