Smartphone as Scanner

This New Scientist article talks about a new technology is really neat. Entitled, “Camera phones will be high-precision scanners” you can read it here.
You can already buy pen-sized personal scanners for $29 to $49 in airplane magazines. Now you’ll be able to point your phone at documents (Holy James Bond, Batman!) and get a copy to read or print later. Neat.
My favourite quotation in the article is “Commuters in Japan already anger bookstore owners and newsagents by using existing cellphone software to try to take snapshots of newspaper and magazine articles to finish reading on the train to work.” And to think the music industry was upset by P2P MP3 file sharing through a few servers. Imagine what it means when every phone (billions of ‘em) can get a fair use copy of any article? Pat Schroeder and Jonathan Tasini will be grinding their teeth down to nubs in their sleep!
So much for warning notices in libraries over the copiers. I hope that your library’s hearts and flowers fund isn’t funded by the photocopy change. Why pay 10 cents when you can beam it to your home printer and print it later?
More grist for the mill.
Stephen