Visioneer makes $200-300 portable scanners.  These are the bar-type scanners and not the flatbed ones.  They are powered through the USB cable, so they need no other power supply or cords, making them very portable.  They can be set to scan papers of various sizes with resolution settings for various grey-scale, b&W, color photo and other items.  Durable and work well in confined / narrow spaces.  High resolution cameras also work well for screen images, maps book copies, and hard paper, but tend to not have good resolution on some microfilm readers.

The "theft of revenue" approach is unique.  Public records can be abstracted as to all of their data by us, the index can often be acquired online, and they would probably not object to a painter, painting a copy of the document in fine detail, but a photo-artist or journalist or researcher with a camera on a public record becomes theft of revenue?  I dare bet that this would not stand in court.