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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."
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!
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.
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
Naturally, I didn't read the article, but I have to say I'm intrigued by this. It would come in extremely handy for radio stations if they no longer needed to have a delay on their live broadcasts. It would especially benefit college radio stations because they often have to limit what they can allow on air since they cannot afford the equipment that is required to have a delay. Although this technology might be very expensive as well, so who knows. I guess I ought to swallow my pride and read the article!
... patenting automated triage.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
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?
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]
Ask me about repetitive DNA
Mother smiling gumdrops! I think that's a bunch of bull smurfs! That sparkle pony happy hole, Bill Gates and his piece of rainbow company, Microsoft, can go flower themselves with a sunshine until they bleed out their bunnies!
My dear friend, please tell me what part of this patent is software per se. These are basic method and system claims, not Beauregard claims. Surely it covers software that performs the claimed methods, or a computer running software that enables it to behave as the claimed system, but it also covers someone doing the same thing with a mechanical system (if you can imagine such a thing, with gears and pulleys everywhere!). What makes software so special, other than it is central to your sheltered world view?
If you have 'forbidden knowledge' in a document, it goes poof with no recourse on your part..
Oh, and it notifies the local authorities.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
... just curse your ass off when you tell it...
And I'm sure this will work wonders for actors and other celebrities against the paparatzies...
What the Luck? Those Gassholes in Redmond can't stop me from sMitting up a verbal storm. I'll BLiss all over their parade!
When censorship is expensive, companies will be less likely to implement it.
Kill yourself. You are NOT WELCOME in America!
this is one of the few issues that really get me mad.
i try to be a mild mannered guy...
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?"
Maybe an myth but I seem to remember that AOL had problems with the vulva in the north east of England.
I think we're living in a nanny state where there is far to much of somebody else telling people what they should or should not listen to or watch. Now what would be more useful would be an option to have the bleeping/muting/whatever done by your set top box rather than in the broadcast audio... that way, you can simply have an option to hear the original audio, or have the censored version for those with delicate ears. FWIW, I hate it when broadcasters censor words out... watching something as innocent as 2 and-a-half-men is a right pain when even things like "ass" as muted... that god they don't try it with South Park.
I think the problem here, within the paradigm you establish, is that MS is playing to the ridiculous system in which the moral police threaten free speech.
These financial sanctions of which you speak are precisely what block free speech.
Your argument is that this permits free speech because it permits them to say what they want. But in so doing, it stops them from saying what they want.
The MS system here simply reinforces the paradigm, and makes money off of it too. It in no way permits or encourages free speech. Unless you mean free as in beer, because their speech no longer costs them fines.
For anyone who ever tried to have fun choosing a hotmail name:
"[censored] [censored] threw a chair because he hated Google."
or
"[censored] [censored] resigned as CEO of Microsoft."
Or of course, anyone who's heard voice chat during a Halo match:
[censored] [censored] [censored] [censored] you [censored] [censored] [censored] [censored] [censored] in the [censored] [censored] [censored] with [censored] spoonfuls [censored] Lucky Charms [censored] [censored] [censored] [censored] [censored] with a [censored] crammed diagonally [censored] [censored] [censored] [censored] [censored]"
or
"I hate it when the coffee shop leaves the [censored] in the cup, I never know where to put it and its too soggy to just leave on the table."
It seems to me that any use of voice recognition to replace the human ear in speech processing tasks is obvious. I wouldn't have thought of using voice recognition for this particular purpose, but I bet anybody in the broadcasting industry would have. I suspect that this would already have been done if voice recognition software was robust enough for radio stations to trust it. That is, no one is doing this yet, not because it is innovative or non-obvious, but because it's not quite implementable yet.
This sort of patent spamming irks me. It obviously does precisely the opposite of what a patent is supposed to do. It is not rewarding innovations or making a costly investment feasible (given a sufficiently advanced voice recognition system I suspect a lone coder could write a program to do this in a day or two). It's just walling off potential innovations. It's giving away profits to Microsoft at the expense of everyone else in the US.
Not that I blame Microsoft. Any company with its act together ought to be doing the same thing. It's the patent office that's to blame.
I don't know how they handle patent applications, but I have a suggestion. For every patent there should be a knowledgeable 'state's advocate' appointed who's job it is to try to get the patent rejected. I know it sound like it would be costly and more complicated, but the potential savings (in terms of monopoly profits not granted and innovation not cut off) to the American people would almost certainly be worth it.
Actually, I agree with you. The FCC and the constant state of moral panic over words and god forbid naked people is absurd.
The world did not end when Janet Jackson flashed a boob at half time in the Superbowl.
I find it very disturbing that there was so much outrage over that incident, but no one seems to care about the amount of violence on TV. Bare breast bad, gun shot through the head good. Sigh.
I miss Japanese TV. Tokyo channel 13 had this great show they played on late Friday night called Mini Skirt Police. Among other things, you could see young ladies crumpling beer cans with their breasts. Another memorable segment was when they had young ladies dressed in long dresses and tied the ends of the dresses to model rockets and fired the rockets off. Then played back the results in slow motion several times. (They were wearing panties :-( ).
I can't think of a more perfect company to hold a patent like this. And for the record, shit piss fuck cunt cocksucker motherfucker tits (RIP George Carlin).
The title seems to imply that the Borg has patented censorship of speech. It's merely a method which uses speech recognition in a particular way to spot expletives and replace them automatically.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
"What words are we going to put into the database for our alpha version?"
...
... how about monopoly too?"
"Well, lets start with words like linux, open source, $%#@, #$%#@, @#$%, and @#$@#
Your mom is a classy lady!
that the FCC can be sued for (enforcing) patent violations?
proud caffeine whore
Like news. Or election debates.
"Americans are hungry! Hungry for [pie]! Hungry for [pie] they can believe in!"
Eric Baird
Calling somebody a "copulating vagina" is arguably even more effective than the usual phrase. Other politenesses, such as alleging that a person is "capital fecal matter" can probably be used also.
Any sound-parsing censor is also liable to generate false positives. What would it do to different voices s and accents rendering "for King", "forking", "a sole", "ash it", and phrases involving the word "country".
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I can't see the problem with this. I can see problems with how this might be applied; but as others have pointed out there might be useful applications as well.
The first thing I thought of was how a friend of mine swears once every two or three words sometimes, especially when he gets excited. This gets a touch tiresome after a while. If someone was playing an online game with him (I'm not a gamer), and didn't want to hear that for hours on end - an end-user device that applied this tech would be just the ticket.
Now it's quite possible the constant beeping would become even more annoying; but they'd have a choice.
#DeleteChrome
Can I choose which words replace which swear words? Because that'd be funny as [the Mormon Tabernacle Choir].
Sing along for the censor (I may heve mis-spelled the first words in each line to assist with pronunciation):
asshole, asshole, a soldier I shall be
to piss, to piss, two pistols by my side
fucking, fucking, for king and queen we'll fight
this cunt, this cunt, this country I'll defend
Add more lines as you think of them...
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
That this technology will be part of a renewed Fairness Doctrine to suppress any descent of liberal government. Feh.
Because unlike other inventions which need huge labs full of the latest gadgets, you can "invent" new software in your parents' basement.
Is it possible to "pirate" censorship?
30 seconds before we get someone posting the old classic, "It's not censorship if someone other than the government does it!"
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
I...love...Windows Vista. It is a piece of...brilliance. I want to take a sledge hammer and ... gently caress ... it to turn it into a pile of ... sunshine.
Table-ized A.I.
Yeah it's called newspeak. There is no more word for Free..because it's Micro$oft there is also now no word for "open" or source" either.
Anyone else feel that their methods "for muting offensive words and replacing them with less offensive versions" could lead them into a clbuttic mistake?
... would determine how it affects this video.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Does this mean that no-one but Bill G. can bleep words?
If so this is a 20 year release from censorship.
Verbum caro factum est
...what happens when you want to give an honest opinion about a corporation's products?
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.
8==8 Bones 8==8
Too bad I already patented the the patent on censoring speech
Hmmm... that patent is a bit obivious. Just a month ago I was at the InterSpeech conference telling speech recgonition researchers that games needed EXACTLY such technology. And I posted on MudDev in October 26, 2004: "In speech, you could keep an N-day log of the speech on HD. An "I'm being harassed" button press by a player would reference (or copy) the recent audio recordings. You could even have the player's computer do speech recognition on it and transmit the transcription, letting your text filters look for swearwords (SR cannot be gotten around by using dood-speak). Why would this not work?"
Given how zealously MS guards it's intellectual property, now NO ONE ELSE will be able to censor speech without getting sued. Free speech is saved!
How about blocking/censoring the horribly annoying high-pitched voices of 10-14 year olds on Xbox-Live. This would be far more useful.
*runs*
Does that mean you like receiving spam mail? Do you think that spam filters are a horrible abridgment of the free speech rights of spammers? Do you think that people trying to sell you stuff should be able to call you up and bug you about it at any time? How about visiting your house to hawk their wares?
The right to speak freely does not include the right to force people to listen who don't want to.
All this technology is is an automated filter for profanity -- just like the spam filter that keeps you mailbox clean of irritating messages you don't want to see. There's nothing that hints that it will be turned on always. That would be irritating and, frankly, would lose Microsoft customers who *like* trash talk.
Too many people have a knee-jerk reaction to the big C-word and think that it's automatically bad. This isn't some government program to prevent people from expressing themselves -- it's a private company offering people selective earplugs who don't want to hear screaming 14 year olds throwing verbal feces at the wall. What's wrong with that?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
It's a good thing because:
1. It'll inspire people to be more creative.
2. People will be more willing to learn foreign languages.
MS is doing right on this one. If you doubt this, it's because you are a klootzak.
It'll inspire people to learn foreign languages. Really even an idioot could see that.
How is giving parents control of their kids viewing in any way "censorship"? It's not like the government forces you to turn it on.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Does anyone remember Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all?