A 3D Scanning services issue on the horizon
Gaming has changed a lot since the days when I was little. I can still remember wen Donkey Kong was a new one. There wasn’t much to those low pixel games. It didn’t matter though because we didn’t know any different. Today’s games have gone way beyond anything from that era. Now with virtual reality, people can literally crawl inside the game. Another thing that is making waves on the gaming scene is 3D scanning services. It is a rather new technology, so we have get to see what is going to come of it. There are question that need to be answered about how far or what limitations need to be put on collecting person identification information. 3D laser scanning services can capture a person’s face and place it into the game. How the gaming industry manages that information is going to become an issue.
3D scanning gets your face
3D scanning services actually allows a gaming device to capture a player’s biometric information that can create a personal avatar in a game. That sounds innocent enough. Some sports games take gamer’s faces and save them into a database. Once in the database, gamers can be the player of the game with their personalized avatar. That sounds pretty cool. The problem is that some people fear that this is an infringement on people’s privacy. There are biometric privacy laws that protect people from having their information sold or used without their permission. For that reason, gaming companies are being sued for peoples’ rights to protect their biometric information. One company that got sued was a gaming company called Take-Two. They were slapped with allegations for collecting biometrical info without permission.
3D Scanning services meets the judge
In fact, it was the gamers themselves that took the company to court for allegedly abusing 3D scanning services. Their complaint was that there was no release form saying that the gamer gave permission to the company to collect such data. The court looked at the gamers accusation and found that the gaming company was innocent of any evil behavior. While there may be some risk that a company could do some wrong things with the information that they collect, this was not the case for Take-Two Interactive Software. They would collect the information and then delete it. The court basically was saying in a sense, “Chill, it’s just a game.”
It seems in this case that 3D scanning services is not an identity theft out to make a buck off of your pretty face. The problem is that this will not always be the case. The players who filed this case were not ignorant to bring up this case. This is a ground that is just on the verge of being tested. There are good companies who have no intention of doing you harm, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some who will. There will definitely be some who will come along with a trojan horse. It is a good idea that we start thinking about it now rather than when the damage is done.
