I'm kind of worried that eventually, scanners will have built in, hardwired/coded chips anti-counterfeiting whereas when you try to scan in a banknote, it will prevent you from doing so. Even if you use an older photo editing program that doesn't have the anti-banknote scanning feature. I like to scan my notes to keep a record of my notes, also to be able to view my notes without touching the originals again. So far a lot of newer software programs prevent you from scanning banknotes, but haven't seen that feature on the hardware level yet. But will that day come?
Who do they really think they are fooling anyways?
With the numerous security features that are on notes these days, counterfeiting is a very sophisticated and involved task. Limitations built-in to
certain commercial hardware or software will always be easy to by-pass by someone dedicated to the task.
Unnecessarily increasing the complexity of a program invariably increases the number of bugs and execution time. The result is that the "cracked" version becomes superior to the standard one. I have to say I don't have much respect for companies who voluntarily inconvenience their legitimate users in the name of some futile endeavor to thwart criminals. It only shows a profound disrespect for their users.
This is very similar in philosophy to the (useless) anti-copying protection built into programs and DVDs. I'll relate a personal anecdote:
My Dad recently returned to architecture school. Through some grant he managed to purchase some very expensive design program. To discourage illegal copying this program went so far as to force the user to carry around a special USB key that had to be be inserted in the computer every time it was used! My Dad was the joke of the class with his legit program as everyone else had a hacked version that loaded twice as fast without the special key.
You can bet he wasn't going to spend money on another "real" version of that program...
As far as scanning notes is concerned, I would suggest using a digital camera (with macro option) instead. You are probably less likely to damage your notes this way and can actually get better images under proper lighting. The original waves and embossing as well as minute defects are almost impossible to see in scanned images which "flatten" the image by shining their light directly onto the note whereas a skilled photograph can show the note even better than seen in person!
