Ukrainian Publishers Call For Support After Russian Attacks Destroy 10 Million Books (theguardian.com) 37
Russian attacks on Ukrainian publishing infrastructure in July and August destroyed roughly 10 million books, which equates to about 30% of Ukraine's annual book output. The Ukrainian Book Institute is warning of a potential "collapse of the entire book ecosystem" and is calling for international financial and industry support to help publishers, printers, and distributors recover. The Guardian reports: A major attack on August 1 hit warehouses belonging to the RNK-Ranok publishing group in Kharkiv, destroying approximately 8m books, following July attacks in Kyiv which led to the loss of more than 1.5m books. In all, the recent attacks have led to the destruction of approximately 30% of the volume of books produced annually in Ukraine.
The RNK-Ranok logistics centre, which stores books for the company's many imprints, is also the distribution centre for the national bookselling chain KnyhoLand, which runs 51 shops and several websites. Along with the estimated 8m books lost, a further 600,000 school textbooks were destroyed. The total loss has been preliminarily estimated at almost 1bn hryvnias (16.5m eueros). "At this stage, we face the risk of the collapse of the entire book ecosystem," said Oleksandra Koval, director of the Ukrainian Book Institute. The institute is asking for donations to support Ukrainian publishers, and is calling on the international publishing community to work with Ukrainian publishers and raise awareness about Russian attacks on Ukrainian culture.
On August 16, a Russian attack on Kyiv led to a fire breaking out at the Pochaina book market, destroying several rows of stalls, books and vendors' property. The Pochaina market, founded in 1997, was once one of Ukraine's largest book markets, with hundreds of stalls and books from more than 120 publishers. The institute said the book industry was of "strategic importance" to Ukraine, preserving and promoting Ukrainian culture and giving the country's voice a platform at home and abroad. [...] The institute also called for an end to cooperation with Russian publishers and literary agencies, saying that solidarity with Ukrainian publishers was crucial to preserving cultural heritage that Russia was "deliberately trying to destroy."
The RNK-Ranok logistics centre, which stores books for the company's many imprints, is also the distribution centre for the national bookselling chain KnyhoLand, which runs 51 shops and several websites. Along with the estimated 8m books lost, a further 600,000 school textbooks were destroyed. The total loss has been preliminarily estimated at almost 1bn hryvnias (16.5m eueros). "At this stage, we face the risk of the collapse of the entire book ecosystem," said Oleksandra Koval, director of the Ukrainian Book Institute. The institute is asking for donations to support Ukrainian publishers, and is calling on the international publishing community to work with Ukrainian publishers and raise awareness about Russian attacks on Ukrainian culture.
On August 16, a Russian attack on Kyiv led to a fire breaking out at the Pochaina book market, destroying several rows of stalls, books and vendors' property. The Pochaina market, founded in 1997, was once one of Ukraine's largest book markets, with hundreds of stalls and books from more than 120 publishers. The institute said the book industry was of "strategic importance" to Ukraine, preserving and promoting Ukrainian culture and giving the country's voice a platform at home and abroad. [...] The institute also called for an end to cooperation with Russian publishers and literary agencies, saying that solidarity with Ukrainian publishers was crucial to preserving cultural heritage that Russia was "deliberately trying to destroy."
Putin's "Project Panama" (Score:3)
Re:Putin's "Project Panama" (Score:5, Informative)
AI ingestion is a combination of destructive and non-destructive scanning. Valuable books go through non-destructive scanning, these are books that are determined to have significant resale value. They might be rare but the key is they are also in demand. Books that are rare but have an unknown or limited resale value or require a significant turn around time for sale, are being scanned destructively.
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They don't need to be.
The thousand-men armies scanning books get the books by buying them by the pallet load. It's stuff that nobody really wants, like old technical books that are out of date, self-published books, etc.
If the book was actually valuable you wouldn't expect the seller to sell it for dirt cheap.
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Just because it is sold cheap doesn't mean it isn't valuable. It may just be that people who value it don't know it exists, or it isn't available due to international shipping, or they won't start looking for years to come.
That's why I get scanned books onto the Internet Archive. Maybe nobody will care, but maybe someone will 10 or 100 years from now.
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This sounds ok in theory, but the law is against it. AI training on books was ruled to be legal explicitly because the books were destroyed. The court ruled that was a form of content shifting rather than straight up copying. If they scanned these "high value" books and didn't destroy them, they could be found liable for that.
Even if one of these rare books was worth a million, that's a rounding error on the book shredding budget and probably not even worth it to them to spin up an alternative process to
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Re: Putin's "Project Panama" (Score:2)
He is attempting to divert our attention.
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It's going to be mostly AI taking those kill shots moving forward anyway, experienced soldiers aren't going to make much difference at that point.
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you mean that the official web of the ukranian presidency spreads propaganda?? oh noes ...
https://www.president.gov.ua/e... [president.gov.ua]
dude, they're not even hiding it ... anymore.
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then again it wouldn't surprise me from a country that literally re-buries actual nazi collaborators responsible for mass murders as national heroes with state honors. so much for "culture and history".
I find it puzzling you would think it strange or even noteworthy some Ukrainians would choose to ally themselves with the enemy of those who have been severely oppressing and intentionally starving millions of Ukrainians to death. What does it say about Russia when allying with Nazis against Russian oppression is viewed as the lesser of two evils?
After all the USSR itself sided with Adolf Hitler during WWII. They even carried out the joint invasion of Poland together like true besties. It would only be a
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I find it puzzling you would think it strange or even noteworthy some Ukrainians would choose to ally themselves with the enemy of those who have been severely oppressing and intentionally starving millions of Ukrainians to death. What does it say about Russia when allying with Nazis against Russian oppression is viewed as the lesser of two evils?
how can glorifying mass murderers be "the lesser of two evils"? dude, what a spin! X'D
After all the USSR itself sided with Adolf Hitler during WWII. They even carried out the joint invasion of Poland together like true besties. It would only be after Hitler stabbed Stalin in the back the USSR would change their tune and came groveling to the allies. Even then after all of that a million Russians would join forces with the enemy during the German occupation of their own country.
Meanwhile in present day Russia the former deputy prime minister of Russia is on tape popping Nazi salutes and Russia has openly Nazi military formations such as Rusich and former Wagner group whose very name comes from a Jew hating German composer highly celebrated by none other than Adolf Hitler himself.
russia has nazis too. some are quite dark and violent. the difference is that they are fringe, criminal and underground, not in parliament.
i mean, this whole cliché-filled diatribe isn't really worth arguing about, and way too tedious to counter, but this ...
Russia is a pathetic third world shithole of a gas station in the process of pointlessly wrecking itself.
... will haunt you the day russia culminates the "smo" and moving on while europe is probably to their eyeballs in serious political and economic crisis, which is
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Russia "culminating" the "SMO".
Pull the other one mate. A much smaller, much less well armed and much less wealthy country has ground Russia's famed army to a halt in a 4 year way so far.
You have to be a right tool or paid troll to use Putin's term to pretend it's not a war of conquest where Russia lost most of the black sea fleet, almost all modern armour, a substantial number of factories and oil refineries, had Moscow bombed from the air and lost a million men.
Smo my arse.
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I just gave a cursory glance at your stupid post. You pissed me off, as did this Russian attack. So i just donated to Ukraine via the united24 website:
https://u24.gov.ua/ [u24.gov.ua]
I am not sure discussing with Russian shills accomplishes much. But my money makes a difference on the battlefield. If Russians piss you off one way or another, go to that website and do some donation. Even small ones count !
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how can glorifying mass murderers be "the lesser of two evils"? dude, what a spin! X'D
WTF are you talking about? What mass murder did Konovalets do?
russia has nazis too. some are quite dark and violent. the difference is that they are fringe, criminal and underground, not in parliament.
Full of shit as usual.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Meanwhile in present day Russia the former deputy prime minister of Russia is on tape popping Nazi salutes and Russia has openly Nazi military formations such as Rusich and former Wagner group whose very name comes from a Jew hating German composer highly celebrated by none other than Adolf Hitler himself.
i mean, this whole cliche-filled diatribe isn't really worth arguing about, and way too tedious to counter, but this ...
You can't counter my statements because they are true trivially checkable facts. You simply have nothing to say.
... will haunt you the day russia culminates the "smo" and moving on while europe is probably to their eyeballs in serious political and economic crisis, which is not far away. :-)
All Russia is doing is culminating its own destruction.
By his own public admission Russia's leader is bored and wants action and excitement in his life so I guess millions of Russians need to live in misery, die and suffer life changing injuries as a result. What a pointless waste of lives, resources and potential. It is understandable why Russia and Belarus have the distinctive honor of having the worlds highest density of alcoholism.
isn't this just plain racism? is that your argument now? get a grip.
The Russian world and its Nazi infested alcohol fueled slave culture are not a "race". Hilarious you have nothing to say.
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Yeah, AI companies training on books is sure destroying culture.
Err, yes, literally they are destroying culture by buying and destroying original and rare books in a way that isn't preserving them either on paper or digitally.
You'r a brainless bitch.
Your* brain couldn't get 4 characters into the insult without fucking up. I wouldn't be throwing shade on anyone if I were so incompetent.
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Not to mention that if there wasn't an existential war going on, there would have been no pressure (at least in Ukraine) to develop AI-assisted and autonomous systems, and the worldwide Cold War style race to be first at any cost would seem a little less urgent.
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Why would this guess mean anything?
A very low priority goal (Score:1)
Saving publishers? You gotta be kidding. The priority should be helping Ukrainian citizens survive at all. Books can be printed later. This country already lost roughly half of its population to emigration because of war. Those who remain in Ukraine are preparing to survive another winter without central heating or electricity.
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The administration of the country formerly known as USA is trying to help the putin regime survive, not the Ukrainians. That has been the situation since the chieftain-in-chief did not get the dirt on Biden that he wanted from Zelensky back in 2019.
The hate is so intense among the trump party members and supporters that most of them are literally subscribed to russian propaganda channels and regurgitate the bullshit from the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) and outfits like Rossya today, Sputnik
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Hey, hasbara bro, why don't vance and trump care about the "iran nukes" anymore? [nbcnews.com] Ask them about it, would be interesting to hear what effected such a dramatic policy change, LOL.
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The manifesto quoted in TFA explicitly asks readers to help Ukrainians survive: "Cease cooperation with Russian entities; Raise awareness about Russian crimes against Ukraine, particularly those targeting our cultural heritage; Support Ukrainian Publishers; Cooperate with Ukrainian Publishers; Donate to medical charities supporting those affected by the Russian war in Ukraine; Donate to the Ukrainian army." https://drive.google.com/file/... [google.com]
What is at risk is not that books have to be "printed later", it is