Story perspectives

Anthropic’s “Project Panama” memo calls for destructive scanning worldwide

8/21/2026

Summary

Story summary

U.S. Amazon destroyed rare books at its Las Vegas facility by cutting bindings to scan them.
404 Media exposed the practice, prompting global outrage over Amazon’s handling of out-of-print books.
Anthropic’s “Project Panama” memo directs destructive scanning of all books worldwide, not only rare ones.
VP Tom Turvey said “Panama” masks the project’s activities from external observers.
Google bought Spirit Airlines’ internal data for $10 million, beating Mercor’s $7.5 million bid.

History

Historical Context

Google launched its book-scanning initiative in December 2004, and by the end of 2008 it had digitized over seven million titles, many still under copyright. Lawsuits by the Authors Guild and publishers began in 2005, leading to a 2015 appellate ruling that upheld Google’s fair-use defense. The precedent now fuels corporate scanning efforts by firms such as Amazon and Anthropic, prompting renewed preservation debates.

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Story summary

U.S. Amazon destroyed rare books at its Las Vegas facility by cutting bindings to scan them.
404 Media exposed the practice, prompting global outrage over Amazon’s handling of out-of-print books.
Anthropic’s “Project Panama” memo directs destructive scanning of all books worldwide, not only rare ones.
VP Tom Turvey said “Panama” masks the project’s activities from external observers.
Google bought Spirit Airlines’ internal data for $10 million, beating Mercor’s $7.5 million bid.

1 / 2