Thank you. Now can I be voted back up please? I don't make a point of posting bollocks.
(I didn't downvote you, FWIW.)
You can't OCR from nothing, at some point you need a direct copy, be it in memory or on disk, of thing being copied.
There's even good solid precedent that copying computer software from disk to memory for the purpose of running it is a copy covered by copyright. A manufacturer sued a third-party computer maintenance company alleging copyright infringement by the technician in simply turning the machine on, and won.
There's even a specific carveout for software, section 117(a)(1), but the same decision held that since that section applies only to the "owner" of a copy, it doesn't apply to licensed software.
It's a pretty bonkers case. Congress explicitly overruled it by adding _another_ carveout in the same section, 117(c), which basically specifically says computer repair people don't infringe copyright in the OS by turning the computer on.
Regardless, mere copying with nothing else can be infringement.
But there are rarely black-and-white issues in copyright law. (Even with black-and-white scans...)