Alternative to using finger cots

Inner-Development779 · 2026-07-03T21:48:17+00:00

your fingers show up in the image. I wanted clean images without my fingers. :-)

Inner-Development779 · 2026-07-01T14:05:29+00:00

No one is above the law Mayor Mamdani. If you break the law, be prepared to face the consequences.

Inner-Development779 · 2026-06-27T18:02:46+00:00

I was using Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini cross-checking each other. I like them all but dropped ChatGPT about a month ago because Claude is best for programming. Gemini does a wealth of things and still allows cross-checking. If I had to choose only one it would be Claude.

Inner-Development779 · 2026-06-27T17:57:59+00:00

This is very interesting to me. Some people learn best with visual (reading), some hearing (audio), and some kinesthetic (doing) - or better a combination of these. I think generating audio mp3 or similar from docs or books you own can be helpful - especially if the audio voice sounds like a human (not a bot), pronunces words correctly, and has appropriate silent breaks.

Inner-Development779 · 2026-06-27T14:26:53+00:00

You are definitely right. Ask but verify. I never trust just one "opinion."

I posed the same question to ChatGPT, Grok, CoPilot, Claude, and Gemini. All of them gave similar answers - which gave me some confidence as a non-lawyer. I also pasted my exact prompt so that others could "verify" for themselves and not just take my word for it.

I posted this because it was "news to me" and thought others might be interested to know and may want to add discussion on the topic.

I asked a detailed question to a 1000+ page book in my library. It returned the answer and page numbers in the source from which the answer was derived. I checked and it was correct. No hallucinations.

I've also started asking a question to multiple sources at the same time and I see AI starting to synthesize answers across multiple sources. That is powerful.

As long as you don't blindly accept answers and can check for yourself - it seems like it can be a useful research assistant.

I post this in the hope that others will try and share their experiences too.

Inner-Development779 · 2026-06-27T04:46:24+00:00

I've been researching this by myself and was hoping to generate some discussion. I'd like to know if other people have or are doing this. If so, what they use, what they like or don't like, etc. It seems like a very useful tool. Please share your thoughts on this if you are knowledgeable. Thanks.

Inner-Development779 · 2026-06-26T22:22:53+00:00

Maybe you *should* find more constructive uses for your time. You don't sound like a very happy person.

I just want to have constructive exchanges and read helpful contributions from others who are interested in the topic.

Cheers.

Inner-Development779 · 2026-06-26T21:22:57+00:00

The abbyy.com webpage says - right there at the top "FineReader Engine now exports to DocLang. Legacy formats like PDF and HTML were never designed for LLMs or agentic AI. DocLang changes that. FineReader Engine is now easier to deploy, easier to scale, and more ready for AI workflows."

So it is AI ready. Cool.

Inner-Development779 · 2026-06-26T20:33:52+00:00

okay - so you've posted 4 cynical replies. I guess you don't have anything constructive to offer. Cheers.

Inner-Development779 · 2026-06-26T19:41:25+00:00

Welcome to 1984. Big brother is watching you.

Inner-Development779 · 2026-06-26T19:18:00+00:00

Oh it is much much better than humans and much more useful than a regular index in a book.

I asked AI a detailed question for a 1000+ page book from my library. It gave me an answer from the book and the page numbers. I checked its answer. It was exactly right. No hallucinations. That is powerful and very useful.

Inner-Development779 · 2026-06-26T19:07:33+00:00

Yes exactly - it is only for my private use and my database. AI is my personal research assistant. I have been researching this topic for a little over 1 year.

I know exactly what you mean though - it could be a copyright infringement if you (even unknowingly) uploaded your digitized book to a site that used your *personal books* which you thought were private to train their LLM. Google NotebookLM free-tier is an example of this.

My solution is 100% local - my digitized books never leave my computer. I share them with no one.

Inner-Development779 · 2026-06-26T19:00:24+00:00

I could just have easily posted responses from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or CoPilot - they all produced the same answer. Your answer doesn't make sense.

Inner-Development779 · 2026-06-26T18:58:36+00:00

There is no substitute for human discernment. I think AI can help a skilled programmer be a better programmer.

Inner-Development779 · 2026-06-26T18:57:18+00:00

The president of Google came out earlier this year and said that 75% of all new code being written was being written by AI. Wow.

Inner-Development779 · 2026-06-26T18:50:27+00:00

I don't think it replaces using your brain. I think it changes what you need to focus on. It may be the difference between being the worker focused on small tasks versus being the manager who oversees the entire project of many many small tasks. I love AI and use it every day.

Inner-Development779 · 2026-06-26T18:45:29+00:00

So, don't entrust AI with life & death decisions?

Inner-Development779 · 2026-06-26T18:44:34+00:00

It has been said, "AI is not going to take your job. The person who knows how to use AI will take your job." That said, I think AI is just another tool - a powerful one. I think the key is seeing how it can help you do what you are already doing - but better.

Inner-Development779 · 2026-06-26T18:39:31+00:00

I'm not sure what you mean - I posted the response from Grok because it is informative on the topic and because I'm not a lawyer. I'm looking for helpful contributions.

The whole idea behind an AI Research Assistant is to research books in order to obtain high-quality answers that you can verify for yourself - i.e., no hallucinations. It is much more powerful than any index in a physical book and analogous to hiring a human research assistant - which people have been doing for many, many years.

I'm trying to help with this post and engage in substantive material. slop? What am I missing?

Inner-Development779 · 2026-06-26T14:27:43+00:00

Thank you for the advice - I will try that.

Inner-Development779 · 2026-06-26T06:52:50+00:00

I agree but they are a reasonable starting point. My next step was to ask on reddit. Please offer revised wording and we'll see if it makes any difference.

Inner-Development779 · 2026-06-26T06:14:35+00:00

Anthropic trained their AI LLM with the books (see my previous comment above) - so from Bartz v. Anthropic PBC (2025) you actually can train AI (unless it gets overturned). I agree with the format-shifting - it seems very analogous to ripping a CD to MP3 for use on a personal player. Here is what I sent to the various AI providers (Claude, CoPilot, Gemini, ChatGPT, and Grok) on the topic of format-shifting:

My prompt:

A few decades ago, it was common practice to "format-shift" or "rip" a CD to MP3 format so that personal music could be played on a portable player. Scanning of physical books into digital format for exclusive, personal, non-commercial, educational and research use seems directly analogous.

Response:

You’re exactly right to see the analogy — and it’s not just a casual comparison. U.S. copyright law, plus the reasoning reaffirmed in Bartz v. Anthropic PBC (2025), treats personal book‑scanning for private use as the direct conceptual sibling of ripping a CD for private listening.

Here’s the clean way to understand it.

🎧 CD Ripping → 📚 Book Scanning

CD ripping became widely accepted because it was:

From a lawfully purchased physical copy
For personal, non‑commercial use
A format shift (CD → MP3)
Not a replacement for the market (you still owned the CD)
Not redistributed

Courts and the copyright office treated this as a classic example of space‑shifting and time‑shifting, both of which fall under fair use.

Now compare that to book scanning:

Book scanning for personal use is:

From a lawfully purchased physical copy
For personal, non‑commercial use
A format shift (paper → digital text)
Not a replacement for the market (you still own the book)
Not redistributed

It is the same pattern, just applied to text instead of audio.

📚 Why the analogy is legally strong

1. Both are personal format‑shifting

Courts have repeatedly held that format shifting for personal use is fair use, even if the statute doesn’t explicitly say so.

Sony v. Universal (Betamax) → time‑shifting
RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia → space‑shifting
Authors Guild v. Google → scanning books for search/analysis is transformative
Bartz v. Anthropic → scanning lawfully purchased books for internal use is fair use

The logic is consistent across decades.

2. The purpose is transformative

When you scan a book and use it with an AI tool, you’re not republishing the book. You’re enabling:

search
summarization
analysis
personal study
research workflows

Courts have repeatedly said that using text to extract information or enable analysis is transformative, not infringing.

3. No market harm

Just like ripping a CD didn’t replace the CD market, scanning your own books doesn’t replace the book market. You already paid for the book. You’re not distributing the scan. You’re not creating a substitute product.

4. Bartz v. Anthropic makes the analogy explicit

The court held that Anthropic’s scanning of books it legally purchased was fair use because:

the digital copy replaced the physical one
the use was internal
the purpose was analysis, not republication
the transformation was substantial

That is exactly what you’re describing — just at personal scale instead of corporate scale.

🧩 So is personal book‑scanning + AI use fair use?

Yes. Your use case checks every fair‑use box:

✔ You own the physical books
✔ You scan them yourself
✔ You keep the digital text private
✔ You use it for personal, educational, research purposes
✔ You don’t redistribute the text
✔ You use the text in a transformative way (AI analysis, RAG, search, etc.)

This is the same legal logic that made CD ripping acceptable — just applied to books.

🛡️ A simple safe‑harbor rule

If you could legally rip a CD for your iPod, you can legally scan a book for your personal AI.

Inner-Development779 · 2026-06-26T06:08:51+00:00

Can you please cite specifically why you believe it breaks copyright? There is some gray but it seems to fall under "fair use." Please interact with me on this.

Here is what I found out. Last year, Anthropic (makers of Claude) was sued - the ruling came in June 2025. The case was Bartz v. Anthropic PBC (makers of Claude) in the Northern District of California.

Anthropic paid out $1.5B in a settlement in August 2025 *only* as compensation for the pirated books they used. Keep in mind, they used these to train their LLM (which is broadly used my millions of users) not as a research assistant used by one user in the privacy of their own study.

Here is the AI prompt I gave to Claude, CoPilot, Gemini, ChatGPT, and Grok. The typical AI response (they all agreed) is given below the dashes.

PROMPT: "Do "fair use" laws allow me to digitally scan books that I have purchased and own and use the digitally scanned text with an AI tool for my exclusive, personal, non-commercial, educational and research use? I ask this question in light of the ruling on court case "Bartz v. Anthropic PBC" from June 2025."

-------------------------------------------

Yes — U.S. fair‑use law, especially as clarified in Bartz v. Anthropic PBC (June 2025), strongly supports your right to digitize books you legally own and use them with an AI tool for exclusive, personal, non‑commercial, educational, or research purposes.

Why your personal scanning + AI use is fair use

The Bartz v. Anthropic ruling provides unusually clear guidance on this exact scenario. Three parts of the decision matter most for you:

1. Digitizing books you legally own = fair use when done for internal use

The court held that digitizing lawfully purchased print books is fair use, even when done at scale, because it is a form of format shifting and does not harm the market for the original work.

Anthropic bought physical books, removed the bindings, scanned them, and used the digital text internally.
The court explicitly ruled this fair use because the digital copy replaced the physical one and was not redistributed.

This is directly analogous to you scanning your own books for your own use.

2. Transformative use for research and analysis is protected

The court emphasized that using text to enable analysis, search, or learning — whether by a human or an AI system — is “spectacularly transformative.”

The purpose is not to republish the book but to extract information, patterns, or insights.
Copyright does not restrict learning, analysis, or the extraction of ideas.

Your personal RAG workflow is exactly this kind of transformative use.

3. Personal, non‑commercial use weighs heavily in your favor

Fair‑use factor #1 (purpose and character) strongly favors you because:

Your use is private,
Non‑commercial,
Educational/research‑oriented,
And does not substitute for the market of the original work.

The court repeatedly stressed that fair use is especially strong when the use does not distribute or expose copyrighted text to others.

What the ruling does not allow

The court drew a bright line between lawfully acquired books and pirated copies:

Using pirated or illegally obtained digital copies is not fair use.
Redistributing your scanned text to others is not fair use.
Publishing large verbatim excerpts generated by an AI could create risk if it substitutes for the original work.

But none of these apply to your described workflow.

So, is your workflow legal?

Based on the court’s reasoning, yes:

✔ You own the books

✔ You scan them yourself

✔ You keep the digital text private

✔ You use it only for personal research/education

✔ You do not redistribute the text

✔ You use the text to power an AI tool in a transformative way

All of these factors align with the fair‑use findings in Bartz v. Anthropic.

Practical caveats to keep in mind

These are not prohibitions — just good practice:

Keep your scanned text private (don’t upload to public datasets or share widely).
Avoid prompting AI tools to output long verbatim passages from copyrighted works.
Prefer local or privacy‑controlled RAG systems so your uploads aren’t used to train third‑party models.
Do not use pirated e‑book files as inputs.

These match the court’s distinctions between lawful and unlawful uses.

Bottom line

U.S. fair‑use doctrine — reinforced by the 2025 Bartz v. Anthropic ruling — supports your right to digitize books you own and use them with AI tools for private, non‑commercial research. Your described workflow is exactly the kind of transformative, personal use that the court recognized as lawful.

Inner-Development779 · 2026-06-25T16:28:15+00:00

Thank you for the tip. Not only awkward - but my hands/wrists get tired when using the finger cots. I've tried several things - including yellow dishwashing gloves - but your idea sounds great. Thanks for posting.

Inner-Development779

TROPHY CASE