Google was recently news because of publishing houses taking offense to their plan of making all books available online. This time around, they have patented a technology that would make it very easy for scanning books. It comes with 2 cameras ad infrared light which will automatically correct the curvature of pages in a book.

Thanks to this technology you get a flat looking page without you having to maul the book under a scanner. It constructs a 3D model of each page and then it de-warps it. It would be interesting to see how this technology would be employed. The University of Tokyo also has worked on a similar system as well. The similarities are too much to ignore though.

This could mean that whoever has access to this technology can easily scan books and then publish them online, which would mean many authors are not going to get any money at all. Firstly, the royalties that the publishing houses give them is too little, and if there was no one to buy the books because they are available online, they one can’t imagine who the writer would earn his bread and butter.

Via: RJ3SP