Australian rare and secondhand booksellers are raising alarm that old books may be caught up in a supply chain feeding artificial intelligence companies, which are believed to be scanning and then destroying physical texts to train their models. The concern follows a US copyright lawsuit against Anthropic, in which unsealed court files revealed the company had engaged in "destructive scanning" — buying physical books, slicing off the spines and pulping the remains after digitising them, while trying to keep the practice quiet. A US judge ruled the practice lawful as "transformative use" under copyright law, and it is now understood to be widespread across the generative AI industry.

Vendors preparing for the Melbourne Rare Book Fair, including Tim White of Books for Cooks, say the physical object often carries as much value as its contents, making destruction of unique or storied items particularly distressing. Several Australian sellers reported unusual bulk orders from a Canadian company called Zoom Books, a self-described "book recycler", placed through marketplaces such as Abebooks and Biblio. Delfina Manor of Good Reading Secondhand Books in Benalla, Victoria, said she received an order for 30 to 40 books across three boxes in May, paid promptly and without quibbling over postage, but asked the company not to order in such volume again after the effort of fulfilling it.