Project Panama: Anthropic’s internal memo on destroying books after scanning

An internal memo entered as Exhibit 21 in Bartz v Anthropic PBC describes a project code-named Project Panama as “our work to destructively scan all the books in the world.” The memo also explains the code name: “we don’t want it to be known that we’re working on this.”

Contractors ripped off bindings, sliced the pages, ran them through scanners and threw the paper originals away. Judge William Alsup’s note on the practice: “One copy replaced another.”

Anthropic turned to destructive scanning after using pirated sources. In the ruling’s phrasing, the company grew less cavalier about training on pirated books “for legal reasons.” The case was decided in late July, with a $1.5 billion settlement with the authors.