Microsoft Patents the Censoring of Speech

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."

Comments

Re:Useless

[4e617474]

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

Pondering this make me feel a whole lot better about the whole enterprise. I'm all in favor of protecting budding young minds from the use of profanity as a substitute for creative expression... by teaching them that profanity is the inspiration for expressing yourself creatively. Also I like the thought of someone going to their manager and saying, "I need a ruling on 'defecating masonry'. Can we let that go?"

Harry Enfield...

[gringer]

Reminds me of this clip from Harry Enfield:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmRTUNh1vPo

[For those hard of flashing, it's a parody of a short gangster conversation in which the bad words have been taped over with better words]

Re:How original

[Tei]

How fun. This as already ben done in spain for some organization alike the RIAA called SGAE.

note: humm... Linux is betwen moron and fucking here. I will make it bold.

Here is the code:

palabras="mafiosos, ladrones, hijos de puta, hijo putas, chorizos, chupopteros, chupópteros, sangrantes, sangrais, sangráis, gilipoyas, por el culo, joderos, que os jodan, chaqueteros, mierda, agilipollao, alamierda, bujarra, bujarrilla, bujarron, bujarrón, cabron, cabrón, cabrona, cabronas, cabroncete, cabrones, cago en, cagoen, calentorra, calentorro, capulla, capullas, cazurra, cazurro, cenutrio, ceporra, ceporro, chingar, chocho, cipote, cipoton, cipotón, cojon, cojón, cojones, cojonudo, coño, cretino, cuesco, encular, estupida, estupido, folla, follada, folladas, follado, folladoras, folladores, follados, follamos, follando, follao, follar, follarse, follo, gilipolla, gilipollas, gilipuertas, hijadeputa, hijaputa, hijasdeputa, hijasputa, hijodeputa, hijoputa, hijoputa, hijoputas, hijosdeputa, hijosputa, hostia, idiota, idiotas, imbecil, imbécil, jilipolla, jilipollas, jilipuertas, joder, joderos, jodete, jódete, jodida, jodidas, jodido, jodidos, jodienda, linux, mamon, mamón, mamones, marica, maricas, maricon, maricona, mariconas, mariconazo, maricones, mentecata, mentecato, moña, ostia, pendeja, pendejo, picha, polla, pollas, porro, pringado, pringao, puta, putas, puto, putos, ramera, subnormal, subnormales, tarugo, tortillera, truño, zangana, zopenco, zurullo,";

function pasapalabra(cadena){
cadena=cadena.toLowerCase();
arPal=palabras.split(',');
i=0;encontrada=false;
while(i if(cadena.indexOf(arPal[i])!=-1){
encontrada=true;
document.formito.initialState.value=257;
}
i++;
}
}

Re:I'm sceptical

[TheLink]

As a Christian I actually find "fucking hell" less offensive, and by the way Jesus is also regarded as a prophet amongst muslims. It seems a violent and vocal minority of muslims appear to take offense at almost anything, almost anything can be regarded as insulting their religion, when in fact they're the ones ruining the reputation of their religion the most.

I actually don't have a big problem with people saying fuck or using other expletives. To me there's a use for expletives. For example, if you were walking about and minding your own business, then some vehicle veered off the road and took your arm off. Now that's a perfectly valid time to say fuck or whatever.

I just find it silly when people use it as punctuation. It's like reviewers giving 100% or 0% ratings in all of their reviews. Amusing for a few seconds at most.