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Comment by aresant | Hacker News Reader

I anticipate all sorts of crazy digital-rights management battles ahead for 3D objects like this - including art - but even more on likenesses / people / etc.

Roughly a year ago I bought a structure scanner (1) for my iPad, scanned in friends, imported to unity and let them walk around themselves in the Oculus DK2.

That was a very cool experience but an unexpected result was how many people asked me to delete the scan afterwords.

The comment was it was too creepy to have your 3d likeness floating around out there, these comments from friends that spend their days posting 2d to FB / instagram.

A bust is about the ideal thing to scan with current consumer tech, since it's completely static, but add in algorithmic stabilization / stitching and 3d scanning a human (or recreating from photographs) with or without their permission is right around the corner.

(1) http://structure.io/

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"I anticipate all sorts of crazy digital-rights management battles ahead for 3D objects like this - including art."

A 3D scan of an existing object does not create a new copyrighted work under US law. See Meshwerks vs. Toyota. This follows Bridgeman vs. Corel (2D photos don't create a new copyrighted work), which follows the famous Supreme Court decision Feist vs. Rural Telephone (which allowed loading phone directories into databases.).

It hinges on the "creativity" aspect. Where discretion and creativity are present, the image is copyrightable. An exact replica is not.

The question is also whether you are allowed to publish a digital copy of a copyrighted sculpture

Also, how does Bridgeman square with the reality that photographs are certainly copyrighted (Getty, etc)?

Bridgeman is only about "exact photographic copies", like a 1:1 photograph of a painting. Trying to be as exact as possible doesn't count as creative work and therefore isn't copyrightable, even if it requires time and skill.

A worst-case-scenario discussion with some colleges brought to mind some invasive future applications of this tech. For example, what if you could film somebody in public long enough for a recreation of their nude body to be generated? Doesn't seem far fetched. What if you could scan the likeness of somebody and then import them into some sort of pornographic virtual reality...

It's enough to make you wonder what kind of lockdown there will be on software distribution (as seen with Google Glass). Something like a "rape simulator" might generate the sort of headline outrage to push public support for comprehensive surveillance of usage.

This sort of thing could be handled with an extension of personality rights law.

Kill the twin.

Well it has been out there that many Hollywood stars have had high resolution image maps made of them for future use.

I think the real threat isn't digital rights management, its going to being alerted when 3D objects like this are inserted into live presentations. As in, when computer power is there to overlay someone in real time it should be acknowledged else separating fact and fiction will not be available to anyone short of government agencies. Need someone to pull a trigger, we got a computer to make it whom we want

I think we should have a steep uncanny valley before a computer model can impersonate the presence of a person on a screen, I expect to be old or dead by then.

Think noisy security cameras in low-light conditions. The bar is lower tag one might think.

i think it's a generational thing. if you asked people 10 years before facebook to post pictures of themselves voluntarily all over the web, they would have the same response.

the same will happen for 3d likenesses once it's trivial to post '3d selfies' on '3d instagram'.

3D selfies, you say?

https://sketchfab.com/models?q=selfie&sort_by=-likeCount

People have been posting selfies ever since digital cameras have been available. Before Facebook they were on Livejournal and MySpace, and before that Geocities. There were just fewer because phone cameras were really shitty ten years ago.

Very cool. I have a DK2; how did you use the image/output of the Structure Scanner to create a virtual world to walk around?

EDIT: I see you used Unity. I'm not a game programmer (I use the Oculus for video work); care to expound briefly? This could be huge for my line of work. Thanks for any time you can spend on my question.

I would love to understand how it would be huge for your line of work just out of curiosity - my mind was BLOWN the first time I tried this.

In terms of getting it to work you can with the Structure Sensor, import the mesh in Unity 3d, drop the OVR plugin for the Oculus Rift and you're there.

Seriously it's incredibly simple, each of those steps you could figure out with a cursory Goog search / tutorial.

Awesome thanks. I work in sports science and the ability to potentially animate this stuff would be huge, but simple scans/renders would be helpful as well.

Any idea how you might do it in 3d just out of curiosity? Probably just multiple cameras using a normal kinematics program.

The oculus forums are the best place to start - hugely helpful and collaborative - if you haven't yet though get a dk2 and scanner best $500 or so all in to see the future :)

Wow I didn't know a product like that existed. How well does it work? Could I scan the inside of classic cars with it and recreate in Vr? What about a room?

Check out the structure sensor one of its two major modes is for room scans and its awesome

Regarding structure scanning, I see a few details online...

Would you consider working up a write up, for Show HN, with all the detail you care to share about your structure scanning experience...?

This has given me an idea for a fundraiser for a local non-profit I support ...

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