Anthropic · Claude · BBC Technology
In a typical week, Stuart Manley, from Barter Books, in Northumberland, would sell two or three thousand books
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He says he has "never seen the like of this after 30 years in the second-hand book trade".
Key facts
- A recent academic text published in only 100 copies, 75 of which are already in libraries, may be rare on the market
- but it is perhaps not such a great loss if one copy is destroyed," says Derek
- In 2025, a judge ruled using books purchased in this way to train AI software was not a violation of US copyright law
- Professor Emily Hudson, intellectual property specialist at Oxford University, says copyright laws in the UK are different to those in the US
- In a typical week, Stuart Manley, from Barter Books, in Northumberland, would sell two or three thousand books
Summary
Over the last few months independent booksellers have been observing a strange pattern of purchases which have seen scores of their novels being shipped to far-off warehouses. In a typical week, Stuart Manley, from Barter Books, in Northumberland, would sell two or three thousand books. But the suspicion is that they are not being bought for avid overseas readers but instead something else with a voracious appetite for new information: AI. The idea that the secondhand sales boom is being driven by the explosive growth of AI can be traced back to a court ruling in the US.