Camera Phone As High-precision Scanner

christchurch writes "The software, developed by NEC and the Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST) in Japan, goes further than existing cellphone camera technology by allowing entire documents to be scanned simply by sweeping the phone across the page. As reported, an A4 sized page takes only 3 to 5 seconds to scan, and it is causing copyright concerns."

Comments

Is that irony?

[B3ryllium]

"Nothing to see here, move along"

Is that irony?

This sounds like those 60s spy movies where they would use the miniature tie-camera to take spy photos :)

Copyright concern? bah

[AmigaBen]

I don't know about you, but I'm sick of everything being a flipping copyright concern. Screw the media conglamorates and their infinite copyrights and fascist enforcement.

Bah.

Re:Copyright concern? bah

[el_womble]

The rate determining step in book copyright infringment is page turning. Single sheet documents can, and have, been easily pirated since the invention of the pen and notepad. I remeber going into a linrary when I was at high school and writing down passages that I thought I could use in an essay. This technology is only slightly faster than that, and is really much closer to the Iris reader pen.

In our office we have a high speed copier that could scan 10s of pages in a minute, but of course it can't copy books, because they are bound.

Now, can I scan a passage, page or chapter easily with this technology? Sure! But then I could do that already.

However, what the internet might let us do is collate our efforts. If 20 people, lets call them students, can be convinced, lets call that poverty, to all go into different books stores at different times of the day and each scan one chapter, or a series of pre arranged pages then they could collate and distribute their efforts very quickly - but theyn, if they really wanted too they could do this already, and they do.

The reason why people don't do it as much as music is that music through cheap head phones sounds the same whether its on tape, CD, radio or MP3. DVDs look nearly as good distributed via DivX or H.264 (but then your only really looking at it for a few hours and from a distrance). Books are read for hours at a time, in close quarters. Books don't run out of batteries. Books are cheap, books don't have verioning issues and work universally across continents without the need of adapters. In most parts of the world, they operate during waking hours with little or no external power requirements, and if push comes to shove you can run from burning any domestic combustable with no further modification.

Doesn't sound so convenient...

[lav-chan]

According to NEC, their software is designed to sound an alarm when being used, to avoid any copyright conflicts. The company claims that any attempts to mute the device somehow or plug in headphones will not affect the audibility of this alarm.

I can understand their reason for doing that, but that doesn't really endear me to using mobile phones 'as portable faxes or scanners that can be used any time'. I personally feel kind of awkward when my phone's camera makes that little clicky noise. I don't think i would ever use it if it sounded an alarm.

You mean...it copies images...into the computer.

[CptTripps]

Give me a break. How can this be a threat to copyright? It's no different than someone snapping a picture of something now. There have ALWAYS been high-resolution scanners...thin ones now too!

This smells a lot like when people were all upset that cd's were getting 'too cheap' and nobody was going to buy another CD. Well...maybe that KINDA happened.

An unmutable alarm?

[logicnazi]

Sounds really fucking annoying. Can you imagine any time you need to scan a page or text an alarm sounds. Either it won't be loud enough to alert people across a bookstore (and what will they do if they are alerted?) or it will be loud enough to annoy nearby persons and make even legitamate uses (say in a buisness meeting recording documents passed around) problematic.

How long do you think it will be before a competitor cellphone company comes out with a phone with the feature or just 'oversight' which allows this to be easily disabled?

Besides the entire idea is really stupid. Clicking to get one page of text is hardly the big scary threat that publishing companies need to be wary about. If the magazine is good enough to buy in the first place it will have many interesting articles and that will be too annoying to scan in a bookstore for a couple dollars.

I mean be realistic here plenty of people buy text copies just because they don't like reading online. The real problem that faces paper publishers is the rise of e-readers and the same threat that faces the music industry.

Big fucking deal

[Frodo Crockett]

As reported, an A4 sized page takes only 3 to 5 seconds to scan, and it is causing copyright concerns.

Really? It only takes one second to photograph an A4 size page with a film camera. Even worse, I hear that anyone can make a film camera with just a cardboard box and a pin. We'd better keep an eye out for info-terrorists running around with Improvised Photographic Devices!

Copyright Concerns?

[ewhac]

Oh, for cry eye, a Minox camera can be used to copy pages. How about a Kodak Brownie? Christ, how about a fscking Daguerreotype?

You're not seriously telling me that photographic copying is a surprise to these people?

I'm sorry, but consumer-level digital computers are 30 years old. Electronic computing in general is at least 60 years old. Photography is over 160 years old. If you haven't figured out by now that Copying Happens, then you're a complete, blithering idiot. Seriously. Grow the hell up now; the world isn't going to stop for you, and the ulcer you save may be your own.

Schwab