Twitter/X

@ancerj argues that cracking down on people who read books and repurpose concepts…

2026-07-28 · 20:03 UTC ·@ancerj ·1 min read

Brief

Author @ancerj contends that attempts to police people who read and reframe book ideas on platforms like Substack and X would amount to censoring reading and that talk of protecting such "IP" is ultimately futile. Michael McNair adds a technical rationale: distillation blends with normal use and, he claims, can only be stopped by disabling APIs—sacrificing model functionality as infrastructure.

Why it matters

@ancerj argues that cracking down on people who read books and repurpose concepts as their own insights on Substack, X, etc. is akin to policing reading; he acknowledges IP protection might theoretically incentivize authors but calls enforcement "a waste of breath."

Key details

  • Michael McNair says 'distillation' is extremely difficult to detect because it is indistinguishable from ordinary use and is distributed across thousands of accounts and machines; he asserts the only way to stop it is to remove API access entirely, which would prevent models from serving as infrastructure for agents, coding assistants, and enterprise workflows.
Source evidence

A little like saying we should crackdown on people reading books, rewriting the concepts as their own personal insights on substack, X, etc. for cachet.

In theory protecting that "IP" would incentivize more creative authorship. In reality discussing it is a waste of breath.

Michael McNair (@michaeljmcnair)

Distillation is extremely difficult to detect, let alone stop. It’s indistinguishable from ordinary use. And you spread it across thousands of accounts and machines so there’s no obvious pattern to flag. Even if you do identify an account and shut it down, they have thousands of others the continue on.
So the only way to stop distillation is to not offer an API at all. But then you lose on functionality. Without an API a model cant become the infrastructure layer that agents, coding assistants, enterprise workflows, software, ect can use.

— https://nitter.net/michaeljmcnair/status/2082194014413987908#m