TechCrunch is trying too hard to make a connection in the title there. Amazon was trying to make money then as it is now. Their selling of books at the beginning was no more principled than the destruction of books now.
This is the legal loophole that allows them to do what they need to do, and the benefit of doing it outweighs the modicum of outrage this title will generate.
Edit. Because I see my statement confused all the HN experts:
Anthropic's version of this was Project Panama [1]. The destruction of the original allows them to keep a digital copy in the AI training dataset. Quoting from the page:
> Judge William Alsup ruled that the destruction and digitization of legally purchased books constituted fair use
This is the legal loophole that allows them to do what they need to do, and the benefit of doing it outweighs the modicum of outrage this title will generate.
Edit. Because I see my statement confused all the HN experts:
Anthropic's version of this was Project Panama [1]. The destruction of the original allows them to keep a digital copy in the AI training dataset. Quoting from the page:
> Judge William Alsup ruled that the destruction and digitization of legally purchased books constituted fair use
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Panama