New Scientist reports:
New 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.
“The goal of our research is to enable mobile phones to be used as portable faxes or scanners that can be used any time,” an NEC spokesman told New Scientist.
But the concern now is that this technology will catapult the publishing industry into a copyright furore similar to that which has gripped the recording industry in recent years.
It’s interesting to ponder how technology shapes our culture. I think there needs to be robust debate within the Christian community about copyright issues. There seems to be little consistency in the arguements of people who get their nickers in a knot about downloading music from the net yet feel no qualms about recording movies off the TV which technically is just as much an infringement. The question for me is, how much does this protect creativity and how much does it stifle it?
Curious Christian 
Lawrence Lessig’s books and blog are worth checking out if you want to ponder copyright and creativity (if you haven’t already done so).
I agree that copyright is a big issue for churches to ponder. I recall bringing it up a number of times in ethics lectures back in the 90s and it was a no-flyer; no interest.
On the one hand it is a truth issue (as in do preachers *really* write their sermons or do they just lift them from the net), on the other hand it is a creativity issue, since so many new media and artforms are built upon lifting an manipulating exisiting ideas.
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