US Judge Rejects Suit Over Face Scanning for Video Game (newyorklawjournal.com)

Two athletes whose images were scanned for a video game have been bounced from court on their claim that the game maker violated a law protecting biometric information. From a report: Brother-and-sister video basketball players Ricardo and Vanessa Vigil were leading a class action that claimed Take-Two Interactive, which manufactured the NBA 2K15 game, ran afoul of an Illinois law that governs biometric identifiers such as retina or iris scans, fingerprints, voiceprints, or scans of hand and face geometry. The Vigils agreed to have their faces scanned to create digital avatars for NBA 2K15, but said they didn't know their images would be available in unencrypted form online. They tried to hold Take-Two liable under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) in Vigil v. Take-Two Interactive Software, 15-cv-8211. Judge John Koetl of the Southern District of New York dismissed the proposed class action suit filed by brother and sister Ricardo and Vanessa Vigil, saying the plaintiffs didn't show "concrete" harm from the way the gaming company stores and uses their biometric data.

Comments

New York Judge/Court arguing Illinois State Law?

[zifn4b]

Well the idea that a New York judge is hearing a case about Illinois State Law is already suspicious but the Illinois Law does state:

(740 ILCS 14/20) Sec. 20. Right of action. Any person aggrieved by a violation of this Act shall have a right of action in a State circuit court or as a supplemental claim in federal district court against an offending party. A prevailing party may recover for each violation: (1) against a private entity that negligently violates a provision of this Act, liquidated damages of $1,000 or actual damages, whichever is greater; (2) against a private entity that intentionally or recklessly violates a provision of this Act, liquidated damages of $5,000 or actual damages, whichever is greater; (3) reasonable attorneys' fees and costs, including expert witness fees and other litigation expenses; and (4) other relief, including an injunction, as the State or federal court may deem appropriate. (Source: P.A. 95-994, eff. 10-3-08.)

Definition of aggrieved: feeling resentment at having been unfairly treated

There might be grounds for an appeal but whether it would prevail probably depends on what state/court the case is heard in. Get a good lawyer if you want to go this way you two.

Entire law here.

Here's the full text of the article

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

US Judge Rejects Suit Over Face Scanning for Video Game
Mark Hamblett, New York Law Journal
January 31, 2017 | 0 Comments
Two athletes whose images were scanned for a video game have been bounced from court on their claim that the game maker violated a law protecting biometric information.
Brother-and-sister video basketball players Ricardo and Vanessa Vigil were leading a class action that claimed Take-Two Interactive, which manufactured the NBA 2K15 game, ran afoul of an Illinois law that governs biometric identifiers such as retina or iris scans, fingerprints, voiceprints, or scans of hand and face geometry.
The Vigils agreed to have their faces scanned to create digital avatars for NBA 2K15, but said they didn't know their images would be available in unencrypted form online. They tried to hold Take-Two liable under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) in Vigil v. Take-Two Interactive Software, 15-cv-8211.
Southern District Judge John Koeltl, in a ruling issued Monday, said the Vigils lacked standing to sue under the act because they had not alleged a concrete injury, and also failed to state a claim.
Illinois passed the BIPA in 2008 to encourage the use of biometric identifiers in commercial transactions and safeguard their use. The law governs disclosure, consent and retention requirements. Violators can pay up to $1,000 per violation, $5,000 in the case of recklessness.
The plaintiffs bar recently has been stepping up suits under the act. In 2016, a judge in the Northern District of California refused to dismiss a class action against Facebook; Six Flags is defending a lawsuit over its use of fingerprints, or finger scans, for season pass members in state court in Illinois; and Shutterfly is a defendant in an action in the Northern District of Illinois.
The Vigils said they didn't understand that Take-Two would collect and retain their images, and the company set no retention schedule for guidelines for permanently destroying biometric identifiers. They also said Take-Two failed to obtain a meaningful release.
Koeltl, however, called the purported violations of the act "at best, marginal."
"There is no allegation that the plaintiffs did not understand that the only purpose of the MyPlayer feature was to create a personalized basketball avatar for in-game play, including in multiplayer mode," he wrote. "And there is no allegation that the plaintiffs' face scans have been disseminated in any form other than to the gamers who played in multiplayer games with the plaintiffs."
Koeltl also said the heart of the complaint was that, while the Vigils agreed to have their faces scanned, they didn't explicitly consent to have their identifiers scanned and retained, a violation of their "biometric privacy."
"Regardless of whether the plaintiffs understood the ins-and-outs of the face scanning technology, or knew that their faces were 'biometric identifiers' under the BIPA, the plaintiffs plainly understood that the MyPlayer feature had to collect data based upon their unique faces to create the personalized basketball avatars," he wrote.
Robert Schwartz, a partner at Irell & Manella, said Monday that Koeltl's opinion was welcomed in a burgeoning field with little case law.
"The good thing is he gave this a comprehensive analysis," Schwartz said. "It's a road map which can guide other judges facing this novel statute."
The plaintiffs were led by John Carey and David Milian of Carey Rodriguez Milian Gonya. They did not return calls seeking comment.
Mark Hamblett can be reached via email or on Twitter @Mark_Hamblett.

Re:All judges are corrupt dumbfucks

[Penguinisto]

Worse than that, really...

A 3-D scan usually results in a very messy pile of vertices/polygons that resemble the human face. The modeler (for the game) then takes that slop and dumps approximately a zillion polys and vertices from it, creating a mesh that has at least some sort of symmetry (for ease of rendering) and a *lot* less polygons (a typical game engine used today would explode if it had to simultaneously render, on-the-fly, two full basketball teams of figures at various distances, each with 50-75k-poly meshes just for their heads, let alone the additional burden of bodies, fabric dynamics, scenery, oh, and the meshes for the refs, etc.)

Usually when the modeler is done, the head might have up to 1k polygons on it (and that's really pushing things). Add Subdividing Surfaces, and you can squeeze the polycount way the hell down, even from that. The likeness is made-up for by texture (skinning), vertex placement (which will by necessity involve a lot of movement from original), displacement/bump texturing, and perhaps (if you have the GPU cycles to spare) a bit of animation that resembles the personality of the dude being scanned (say, a trademark smile).

Meanwhile, biometric data on a human face only calculates a relatively smaller number of points (that are not as easily affected by small variations in emotion, muscular movement, etc), and has fuck-all to do with what a human would expect to see. Neither one will resemble the other in any way, shape, or form, because they're made for two totally different purposes. For example: biometrics will have, say, vertices marking the center of each pupil, whereas a game mesh doesn't give a flying frig about the eyes beyond telling subdivision make them spheres and by the way here's the UV Map image to set the texture on them.

TL;DR: You cannot (as a practical matter) make a usable mesh of the guy from biometric data, nor can you make usable biometric data from the mesh used in-game.