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Microsoft Seeking to Patent Automatic Censorship
theodp writes "Microsoft is back at the USPTO, this time seeking a patent for the automatic censorship of audio data for broadcast, a system and method for automatically altering audio to prevent undesired words and phrases from being understandable to a listener as originally uttered."
Well actually, "frack" was used on the original BSG, along with other made-up words (like the "centon" unit of time). So its use on the new BSG is more of a nod to the earlier show than a way of avoiding censorship.
But yeah, you're right that this will lead to new swear words to bypass the filters. After a while the old swear words will be passe and no one will use them, and Microsoft will start filtering the new words, and the cycle of swearing and filtering will continue ad infinitum.
Soylent Green is peoplicious!
The Bill of Rights does NOT protect against censorship by non-government entities. If you are using some Microsoft service, Microsoft has every right to censor whatever you say.
Why limit this to swear words? See Carl Sagan's "Contact" in the original version, where the richest man in the world got that way by first inventing a box that would detect and censor commercials, and then expanding to detecting 'insincere' speech -- thus shutting off advertising, many televangelists, and almost all politicians....