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Microsoft Patents the Censoring of Speech

Posted by Soulskill on from the %$!#-!%-!%!$-##%-$@#! dept.

theodp writes "On Tuesday, the USPTO awarded Microsoft a patent for the Automatic Censorship of Audio Data for Broadcast, an invention that addresses 'producing censored speech that has been altered so that undesired words or phrases are either unintelligible or inaudible.' The patent describes methods for muting offensive words and replacing them with less offensive versions, and 'a third alternative provides for overwriting the undesired word with a masking sound, i.e., "bleeping" the undesired word with a tone.' After all, there's nothing worse than being subjected to offensive speech when you're shooting someone in the head."

10 of 192 comments (clear)

  1. Yay! by Kral_Blbec · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So now the parents of kids too young to play dont have to worry about letting them play!!

    Come on, if you're old enough to play the game, you're old enough to either deal with it or tell them to stuff a sock in it. There are so many other options to work with. Why not just mute the stupid player? Or not even use the voip at all? Like the article says, its only really used for trash talk anyway. Unless I know who I'm playing with, I'm not going to try and coordinate anything.

    Stupid idea.

    BTW first post!

  2. Useless by FluffyWithTeeth · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Trust me when I say you can come up with new curses faster than you can code them into an automatic censorship proram...

    Nevermind all the fantastic new accents this is going to promote. And if you disagree; well quck you.

    1. Re:Useless by SL+Baur · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'm all in favor of protecting budding young minds from the use of profanity

      My parents kept tight controls over what I was allowed to see/hear. Fortunately, I learned profanity from other kids on the playground at school.

    2. Re:Useless by nightfire-unique · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm all in favor of protecting budding young minds from the use of profanity as a substitute for creative expression...

      I know I speak for many of us here when I say:

      Fuck you.

      Keep your intellectual parenting persuits where they belong: in your home. Raise your own fucking kids, and let me raise mine without government interference. We'll let them both compete in 20 years and see who did a better job.

      The moment you get your way with bad language censorship, I get my way with religious censorship.

      --
      A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
  3. How original by clang_jangle · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Wow, it's just a regular cavalcade of innovation over there in Redmond. First Bob, then Clippy, UAC, aero, and now this -- Woooot!

    --
    Caveat Utilitor
  4. Oh come on..... by LibertineR · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Is the heading not a TAD over the top here?

    Broadcasters can be, and have been fined thousands of dollars PER EVENT, through violations of FCC rules. One slip of the tongue should not be the basis for fining a program out of existance.

    A tool to help in that regards DOES NOT equal sensorship, and the title is a ridiculous assertion that hurts credibility around here.

    Hate Microsoft if you want, but Christ, why be stupid about it?

    What is next? "Microsoft wants to eat your babies"?

    As supposedly logic-driven geeks, can we not do better?

    1. Re:Oh come on..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      What exactly is inaccurate about the headline? That's what their program does -- it censors speech.

      Broadcasters can be, and have been fined thousands of dollars PER EVENT, through violations of FCC rules. One slip of the tongue should not be the basis for fining a program out of existance.

      Actually, I agree with you. The FCC and the constant state of moral panic over words and god forbid naked people is absurd.

      A tool to help in that regards DOES NOT equal sensorship, and the title is a ridiculous assertion that hurts credibility around here.

      It certainly is harmful; let's say that broadcasters were to start using such software and accidents no longer happened. That means that there's even less likely a chance that somebody will challenge FCC fines in court. Look at nipple gate -- it took five years, but eventually the fines were overturned as it was ruled that the broadcasters cannot be held liable for the actions of the two performers on stage. Had similar software existed and been use in time for video, this ruling would not have happned.

      What exactly do you suggest such a tool be called? It certainly isn't government censorship, but it
      certainly does prevent certain utterances.

      Hate Microsoft if you want, but Christ, why be stupid about it?

      I'm seeing nothing here about that (yet, it's still early). The most that the article blurb does is point out the absurdity of bleeping out certain words while brutally killing people. Perhaps your humor detector requires a reboot, but this isn't really "Microsoft hate" nor is anyone here being stupid about this but you. You're ranting about a perfectly accurate choice of words to describe a technology that many here find silly and/or stupid.

      What is next? "Microsoft wants to eat your babies"?

      There aren't sufficient HTML tags for this, so I'll warn you here and now : the following is meant as a joke. It is a snarky comment and should not be construed as fact.

      "I think they already filed that paperwork years ago.

      Feeble joke over.

      As supposedly logic-driven geeks, can we not do better?

      You haven't managed to point out any actual logical problems here. So far as I can tell, you've managed to complain about the word "censorship" being used and dropped in a little concern trolling about Slashdot's credibility and the character of the posters here. That part of your post actually makes me wonder if you're just making a strange attempt at a joke, like Andy Kaufman -- it's funny to you, but nobody else is aware that there's a joke or even gives a damn.

      In short, you're spewing nonsense, something else that "hurts credibility around here."

      --Summer Glau

    2. Re:Oh come on..... by SteelFist · · Score: 2, Insightful

      A while back I was watching Saving Private Ryan on TV, and I actually thought it was kind of funny that they would show people stopping to pick up missing limbs, people holding innards in, etc, but when they were just walking through a field they censored out the curse words. Kind of doesn't make sense to me...

  5. I'm sceptical by TheLink · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm sceptical that it'll work that well. I do think it'll be more interesting than listening to people using fuck as punctuation - which is to me is dismally boring.

    Question: how will it cope with people using stuff like "Jesus/G-d" as an expletive? That sort of thing is offensive to many people too.

    Imagine if people started using Muhammad as an expletive. You can't just censor every mention of Muhammad because that will get you in big trouble too ;).

    It'll be interesting if the system can tell from the context.

    How would it deal with "I helped my uncle jack off his horse" vs "I helped my Uncle Jack off his horse?" ;).

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  6. Who watches the watcher? by Bones3D_mac · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It'll be interesting to see just how such technology will be abused. Want to prevent speech that might inspire someone to stand up and do something regarding a certain topic, simply filter out keywords in context to the topic itself to help tilt the topic to favor one group's interests over another.

    "Free" speech is long dead and buried. Welcome to the next China.

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    8==8 Bones 8==8