I don’t answer stupid questions. You should have picked up on this pattern by now. I just ignore them out of courtesy to you.

Judging by the very (unnecessarily) long comment thread, you aren’t anti corruption or in favor of a more just legal system, you’re just cranky that you’re not the one who decides who the law protects and who it restricts.

Everyone deserves equal protection under the law. You disagree?

It’s bad to murder. Not all killings are murder.

Everyone deserves all the privacy the law affords them, and these journalists sent a tracker to an anonymous party.

In this very thread you’ve complained about a two tier system, so your solution is… a two tiered system? lol

I don’t know why I’m bothering to tutor you about this; you clearly have no desire to learn.

I’m not appealing to any decency from you (hilarious). I’m just asking for some consistency. You presumably think violations of privacy are bad, but here you are cheering on one.

I’m certain you understand the point I’ve been making, you’re just unwilling to be intellectually honest about it.

Good luck.

I meant it would be nice to see evidence of thinking lol

I’m “shilling” (lol) for privacy. Journalists shouldn’t be mailing hidden trackers to anyone. That’s probably illegal. It definitely should be.

Is this for real?

They sent a secret tracker before the article was written. The problem isn’t the article, it’s putting a secret tracker in the order. Would you like secret trackers in your orders, or would you consider that an invasion of privacy?

Seriously, I don’t know any other way to say it.

Really makes you think

I look forward to seeing evidence of that.

If it ended up somewhere else, the article would be different

Yes!! Finally!!

What if it ended up at a mom and pop store? Are they deserving of privacy?

They sent a tracker in a book before the article was written. Before they knew it was Amazon. It only turned out to be Amazon, but when they sent it, it could have been anyone.

I feel like I have to ask: are you associated with the source? Your inability to understand my very simple and straightforward point is suspicious.

They didn’t know it was Amazon when they hid a tracking device in someone’s order. They suspected, only.

What if it had been a small bookstore, or just some collector? Do you approve of those people being tracked?

Are you really not seeing this, or are you pretending to not get it?

Then the responsible journalists wouldn’t publish the story.

My concern isn’t the story, it’s the “hiding a tracking device in an order with an anonymous party”. That’s an invasion of privacy no matter who it’s done to. You’re presumably only okay with it because you dislike who it was done to, which is why I’m asking you to consider it without hindsight. What if it were done to someone other than Amazon? Do you still support that invasion of privacy? Why or why not?

https://archive.ph/It6to

there was no foolishness

The foolishness was yours. “The ends (in hindsight) justify the means” is not a particularly wise stance.

Like I said, what if it wasn’t Amazon that was ordering the books; would it then be okay?

I understand the dislike of billionaires, but don’t let it stop you from thinking.

Hindsight makes people come to very foolish conclusions.

Hint: what if it didn’t turn out to be Amazon?

there are plenty of people who can

Do you have any scientific evidence to support this claim?

I don’t think it’s particularly good at all, but it does while away the hours sometimes

What model are you using?

I can’t see anyone who enjoys reading being enamored with AI.

Bold claim from someone who spends hours writing AI stories for themself. Then again, I guess I am assuming you consider yourself a person who enjoys reading.

My wife reads over 300 books per year, and she spots it pretty easily.

That’s over 5 books a week. I find if difficult to believe she’d notice if you slipped a book she read in January book into the list for this month, let alone an AI generated story. Still, that’s an impressive amount of books. My wife reads about 100 a year, but they’re almost all in her favorite genre, crime drama, and I am completely certain I could get a decent AI model to output a full length book in that genre and she wouldn’t notice. I’m not sure quantity of books read in a time frame really tells us much, either way, about the ability to detect AI generated writing.

As opposed to a single copy of a physical book?

First, I was discussing the hypothetical put forth by that other person.

Second, “hide it from the public” is almost certainly a function of copyright law. Just because you are allowed to digitize a book doesn’t mean you’re allowed to distribute it.

If I was the owner of the only copy of an important book, I would have the legal right to destroy it, but nobody could argue convincingly that I did a good thing.

I’d argue that, if the destruction was done to digitize the book, what you did was a good thing. Would you disagree?

I read the article and don’t see what you’re seeing. Can you point out the “false pretenses”. It seems the order was placed via a site that intentionally allows anonymous purchases.

As a sidebar:

a bookseller suspected that an order they received for 1,000 books on Biblio, a marketplace where buyers can remain anonymous, was for an AI company. So to get to the bottom of the mystery, they agreed to place an Apple AirTag between the pages of one of the volumes.

Emphasis mine.

That seems sketchy to me. I’m not confident it’s illegal, but I’m guessing a website that intentionally allows anonymous purchases isn’t going to take kindly to a vendor putting a tracking device in an order.