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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."
"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
This isn't new; I've seen James Bond copy pages by photographing them with one of those tiny cameras. This is only different in that it's digital, and built into a cellphone.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Bah.
+5 Insightful, really!
the copyright issue is a non-issue contrived for the story, there really is nothing to it
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
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.
So now kids can write a note, then scan it, then phone it to their friend? Good, I was getting sick of people smsing me notes of little ascii pr0n.
New, improved, never-jamming zipper for use in trousers/jeans has been developed, which takes only 2s to take your pants off, and it is causing rape concerns.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
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.
My
you may notice that any copyright quotes don't even seem to be related to the phone!
Unpretentious Sydney reviews by unqualified Sydney reviewers
Copyright concerns?? How about industrial espionage concerns. Seems a little more important.
Now the spys can get away with saying: "Copy what? I'm calling my mother!"
-Digital Madman
A bullet sounds the same in every language. So stick a fucking sock in it...
"as reported, DRM/Insidious Computing technology
will prevent lawful uses by the true owners of products. It is causing copyright concerns."
copyright gives you the right to use a copyrighted product in any way you choose. the original agreement was for copyright law to be law only. that means it is up to the courts and the legal system to decide if there has been infringement. technical methods to prevent lawful use is an infringement itself.
from my point of view, any product that prevents you using your purchased product in a lawful manner (everything except distribution), results in the immediate revocation of the company's copyright priviledges.
you want DRM/Insidious Computing, fine. but in doing so, you forfeit your copyright protections. that means it becomes in essence, a trade secret. if someone cracks the protec^H^prevention scheme, then they can legally and ethically release all of the information for free into the public domain.
now all we need are some reasonable judges and congre^H^H(well you can't have everything...)who won't listen to steamboat willie's copyright cartel.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
The kind of companies that would worry about this have already banned cell phones in sensitive areas.
This is a non-issue.
Maybe they should be worried about these new fangled photocopier thingymajigs.
This is another nail in the coffin of corporate's insane fantasy of "copyright is our right to deprive the public of their rights", leading them to try to push DRM and anti-fair-use legislation.
Looking at them reminds me of a drowning man trying to grab at anything to stay afloat. Unfortunately, they're more like the infamous 800 lb. gorilla-octopus which is making it unpleasant for me to live during their death throes.
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.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
consider this patent. Mouse/scanner or the ability to purchase this Pen Scanner or god forbid instead of using the phone the person turned around and used the Xeorox. *sigh*
No it's more a case of someone shouting "Quick close the barn doors the horses have all left!"
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
I love it when a story in the Hardware section starts with the words "The software...".
My other comment is funny
For the 4 billion people that don't have a cellphone yet to annoy me with, they finally have a reason to get one after they find things like drinkable water, electricity, and food... the killer app. Theft!
You could just TAKE THE BOOK. Geez.
Who is this person still using paper anyway?
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
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!
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
What TFA fails to mention is that this is a concern raised in Japan about technology from a Japanese company.
Don't forget that the Japanese have had 1.3 megapixel or greater quality cameras in their phones for years, and this isn't the first time that there's been articles about bookstore / magazine store owners (allegedly) complaining about people abusing technology in a way that might affect their revenue.
This being the same Japan where the video game industry gets its panties in a bunch over used game sales, video game rentals are illegal, music cd rentals are okay, and importing of foreign-produced cd's is now illegal - the point is, the copyright standards and the way the gov't and corporations twist the laws to fill their pockets are a bit different than those in the rest of the world. Jumping to conclusions about these devices based on complaints probably pressured by the bureaucatic excesses of one gov't seems a bit premature at this point.
So, according to the article, we will see this commercially around 2008-2010.
Justin Rattner tells us that in 2015, we should expect to see real-time super-resolution from cell cameras. That is, the ability to pick up several frames, and figure out more about the image, in real time, just based on the offsetting from holding a camera with a minute unconscious shake. (The problem is parallelizable, and 2015's x10-x100 core systems should take care of it.)
We already have the software to construct models & textures, after some rendering, from video footage.
If we could do real-time super-resolution in 2015, then it makes sense to me that, with some processing time, cell phone cameras in 2015 will render 3D-model textures and models. If the 4G network is around by then, (and it should be,) we could very well see instead that the data is sent to more powerful processing arrays elsewhere, (ie, on your home computers, or on Google's computers) and rendered into models in real-time. 4G is around 20Mb, perhaps 3G at 3Mb is enough to transmit low-grade video capture in real-time; Enough to make our 3D models in real time as well.
Presently, the OCR cameras require some rendering time. That requirement will clearly be gone by 2015; The cameras will automatically OCR text that is identified on-screen. (Perhaps the alarm will be a constant chirping buzz, whenever you use it?)
As a side note: Perhaps Google maps of the future will learn about what street names go to what streets, simply by recognizing and reading the sign posts.
What do you want to bet Google's going to get video footage of every city, and crank it into full-on 3D models? You better believe it. I'm betting on 2015, tops. (Who knows; I wouldn't be shocked if they weren't cranking on their Seattle footage now.)
We should also expect, I think, that the public will assemble it's own models from public footage. Volunteers will capture footage with their cell phones (or, if they are showing off, sophisticated digital video recordsers,) and feed it to a public free culture grid, which will churn out 3D models and textures for distribution and retrieval.
Is there a flaw in my reasoning? Are these outlandish thoughts for 2015? No! You can't have your Flying Car! Down boy! Retrain your imagination! Yes, people have predicted the future before; read about NISTEP's 1970's predictions for 1990-2000.
It's already illegal in Ohio to operate a camera phone (or any other video camera) in a movie theater, even in the lobby. For that matter, this applies in any business where a copyrighted work is being shown - such as Wal-Mart if they're showing movies on their TVs. You don't even have to record from the copyrighted material to get arrested and charged - just turn on the record function and you're guilty (and it's a felony on the second offense). What's more, the business owner is allowed to detain you until the police arrive.
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
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
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.
ISSUE
The audible alarm may be bypassed by removing the device from which it makes sound.
PROOF
1) Open case
2) Slice wire going to speaker
3) Take pictures of secret documents
4) Close case
IMPLICATIONS
You'll somehow be thrown in jail by the DMCA and your entire family somehow destroyed by the Patriot Act and other anti-terrorism measures.
ISSUING AUTHORITY
Common sense.
from the article:
According to NEC, their software is designed to sound an alarm when being used, to avoid any copyright conflicts.
Doesn't look like a non-issue to me. Sounding an alarm when I use their product? Excuse me?? Technology is driving us toward a turning point in the history of sharing ideas. Eventually people are going to question whether the benefits of intellectual property rights laws are worth the enormous costs of enforcing them. For that to happen, ordinary people who normally wouldn't understand let alone care about intellectual property issues are going to have to get really annoyed by the enforcment. Personally I think building a little electronic conscience into every media device to tell people they're committing immoral acts is a great way to start turning that tide.
I thought of it only last week, of course, I didn't patent it. Bugger. So pick my brain for prior art.
But I figured that I could more rapidly, and non-destructively scan my dead-wood collection of books if I could use the USB Cam attached to my computer. Much faster than a flatbed scanner.
You would need an algorithm that ensures that you can scan the whole page as you hold the camera, stitching the parts together, and ignoring things outside the page area. Then feed the result into an OCR routine to get a text version.
Most (nearly) books are high contrast, black on white (or yellowish depending on book age) so the page boundaries shouldn't be too hard to detect.
Now make a nice little programme to wrap this in, and you can "quickly" convert your favorite books into a format that can be read on a PDA, most of which will never be realised in any usefull digital form anyway.
Plan B was just to use a digital camera to fotograph each page, and then feed the memory card into the OCR algorithm. Probably a lot easier.
This seems to be an idea along very similar lines; I predict that we reach the pre-MP3 stage for books very soon now (when it took 10+ minutes to encode a single CD track on a P90) Camera's are everywhere, and you can probably download a half-decent (for European scripts) OCR library for the hard work.
I sincerely hope so, as I would like my dead-wood to be as accessible as my music collection. (and to be honest, the dead wood is just gathering dust, wheras on my PDA i might actually get to re-read them in the train)
Now back to reality....
Well, then, if commercial developers don't even want to make money (i.e. only come up with creepy copyright considerations rather than a business case) on a feature that is most useful in academia, this looks (so much rather than: sounds ;-)) like the right (scientifically challenging and quite possibly unpatentable) project to refine in the next open-source Summer of Code. Apply early, and BTW you'd "beta" have an early version ready by the start of this term. ;-/ Coming soon to a SourceForge near you I guess...
I live in Japan, and I've seen no bans on camera phones in magazine stores or elsewhere. Every single Japanese person owns one and takes it everywhere.
:)
What's more, it's common practice for people here to go to the book store or magazine rack and just stand there reading the magazines without buying them.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
Nice comparison several people are making with film cameras here. I'm sure this would work for copying an article to read on the train, provided your journey takes an hour and a half, and the train has a one hour photo lab in first class.
Similarly, photocopiers? Yeah, you just need an extension cord, sneak it up to the newsstand, and hit copy when nobody's looking.
Making up copyright concerns before the device is even released? Nope. Camera phones are already being used to copy articles, so if an improved text-recognition function is being added to phones, it's only reasonable to consider the consequences.
Fair use? Doesn't look like it to me. Extracting a portion of a work for criticism or satire, yes. Because "It's my right to be entertained for free", no.
The stupid alarm feature is the result of NEC protecting itself from its users.
Next time some industry relying on copyright goes asking for stricter legislation, they have all they need to prove the sky is falling in. If people want fairer copyright, that means completely boycotting those that oppose it - simply not paying for their stuff only makes their argument stronger.
Autostitch/autopano/autopano-sift, along with Panorama Tools, PTAssembler, PTGui or Hugin (open source!) makes it possible to take a bunch of images, and automatically detect which sets of images can be merged into panoramas/photo-mosaics.
Using any of them on a set of partial scans can be used to regenerate the original page.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
In Japan, all new mobile phones are required to make a sound when taking photos (and since the average Japanese upgrades their phone every 6 months, that now includes nearly every phone in use). This alerts all people nearby that the user is taking the photo (though this really has more to do with the men taking candid photos of the schoolgirls). Needless to say, my Japanese phone makes a shutter sound even when it's on silent mode.
My new cellphone (Sony Ericsson D750i) has a 2MP camera. That gives a resolution of about 130dpi for an A4 page. That's enough to copy pages without any stitching. In fact, since my scanner has a 40 seconds warm-up phase, I started doing photocopying with my phone. It's simply faster and the quality is good enough for me.
This sounds like those 60s spy movies where they would use the miniature tie-camera to take spy photos
Or the "serious" ones where they used the Minox with the focus-string to copy documents - just like the real spys did.
After WWII japanese industry at first was synonymous with cheap, shoddy, stamped-metal goods. This went on for a decade or more. But as they got their industry built back up they began to make some quality goods. One of the first things to be made in production were inexpensive cameras with high-quality optics.
Back in the '60s there was a stereotype: The crowd of Japanese tourists with cameras, photographing everything: Stop signs, park benches, flowers, door knockers, etc. The impression was that photography was a fad in Japan, fueled by the availability of the good cameras and film.
In those days industries gave tours of their facilities as a PR thing, letting anybody who wanted see how things were made: Cars, steel, plastic parts, electronic devices, cerial, you name it. Of course the ubiquitous half-busload of vacationing Japanese would take the tours.
Shortly thereafter a host of japanese industries - auto, plastic, electronic, cerial, you name it - upgraded their processes. You might think it was just the inevitable "convergent evolution" of good engineering. But an exact clone of the Rice Crispies shot tower?
Turns out that, regardless of whether the fad itself was a put-on or an honest social phenomenon, Japanese industrial spys had taken advantage of it for corporate espionage.
And very effective corporate espionage: Japan went from a producer of cheap stamped-metal toys and cheap quality cameras to an industrial powerhouse. They became the dominant producer of automobiles and consumer electronics, to name just two major industries where the US HAD been the leader. The US steel industry and much of the manufacturing that used its output, meanwhile, became the "Rust Belt".
And US companies (such as Kellogs) stopped giving the plant tours that HAD been major tourist attractions for their localities. (With the result that a couple generations in the US have now grown up with negligible understanding of the internals of industrial mass production, one factor contributing to a their profound distrust of corporations.)
Now we have had cellphones with a built-in camera as a standard component for several years (until they're deployed ubiquitously), and news of document scanner software for the cameras. Sounds to me like a similar fad and a similar opportunity.
Ok, so it makes a noise. And YOU can't disable the noise. But I'm sure that there will soon appear a hack that will disable the noise. (If nothing else, the "cute" ones that use a recorded camera shutter for pictures and whatever they pick for a scanner function will play them from a table. So make a modified firmware load with an empty table, or a hidden extra menu option to select an table entry containing silence for the prefered sound.)
But if I take off my tinfoil hat I start to wonder: WHY do cellphones have cameras? Did YOU ask for your cellphone to have a camera? Did you WANT your cellphone to have a camera? Did you have a USE for your cellphone to have a camera?
Or did it suddenly appear, despite the added expense, on a consumer item in a cost-sensitve, highly competitive, industry?
Dominated by manufacturers in places like Japan... B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I recently submitted a blurb to slashdot about the upcomming release of the Stix fonts and the fact that they are asking for feedback on the license right now. I was nonthreatening, so it got rejected of course. So now I'm considering a rewrite mentioning "License" in the title and some BS about YRO and copyrighting the very fonts your documents are created with. I think /. would be interested in these new fonts, and also interested in the license terms. It's unfortunate that it takes a line of fearmongering to get a story accepted these days. How about if several readers try to submit this one with various slants ;-)
Though I agree that this is a very interesting and telling, observation, it overlooks a couple other factors in post-war Japanese industrial success.
1) The Japanese adopted the statistical process control methods of Western Electric developed by Edwards Deming. In the '80s, the Japanese were eating Detroit's lunch by producing higher quality cars using these methods.
2) The Japanese industrial base was severely damaged by WW2 bombing and all those factories were rebuilt according to state-of-the-art designs. Once the rebuilding expense was amortized, this gave them a competitive advantage.
I recall from History class that "unicausal" explanation of historical trends are generally inferior to multicausal explanations.
so I can just point at the underside of a CD, click the shutter button, and have some software read the image and assemble the .iso for me.
HP Had a product called Capshare that was a handheld scanner that you could run over a page and then it would put everything together on your PC. It was a great little product, but I don't think they marketed it well. It was perfect for anyone who was doing researcher. http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/prodCategory?dl c=en&lc=en&cc=us&product=304005
Abstinence is a government conspiracy. www.SafeSexZone.co