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Apple Awarded Anti-Sexting Patent
eldavojohn writes "If your parenting skills aren't up to snuff, Apple's got a patent on the device that will allow you to control what your child sends and receives. Entitled 'Text-based communication control for personal communication device,' this patent uses examples like increasing the number of Spanish words your child receives so that they can better learn Spanish. You could even use it to control your child's grammar and spelling in outgoing text messages. But news sources seem to be focusing on the censorship issue that Apple has been criticized for before: 'The control is in line with earlier efforts adopted by Apple like Playboy which entered into a deal with Apple to censor its content to secure a place in App Store.' Perhaps the wives and agents of popular athletes would be more interested in this technology? Apple is certainly sending a message opposite to the one Microsoft advertises."
A Favre jab on slashdot? Seriously?
I knew this place was going down the crapper, but I didn't think it had hit the "E! TV" level of low yet...
News flash, dearest parents. Controlling everything that your child does is not good parenting. Yes, the kids will mess up every now and then. So do we all. If you impose a lot of rules, monitor every little thing that your child does, then all they will do is find a way around whatever blocks / rules you have in place. They have a LOT of energy, and endless free time.
tl:dr - Being a good parent does not mean monitoring every little action.
I wonder, what will the next great "moral panic" be? Quite honestly, I hope this is the last one, because every "moral panic" only harms the world, does nothing to benefit it and there was never any harm to begin with.
Why is it that the masses and the media can't differentiate between real threats and panic?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The only way to lose control of your kids is to refuse to loose control of them. If they know you trust them, they will live up to your expectations. If they know you are watching them like a hawk, you'll find they will withdraw to places you can't find them.
Apple is absolutely wrong here. It isn't a technological problem these parents are dealing with. It is a parental problem.
Whew! There is *no* way kids will find a way around this. Problem: SOLVED! /s
I've said it before, but you can't always solve social problems with technological solutions, and here's a perfect example of that. Teenagers need to be informed about the permanence of the internet, the value of trust, and what the consequences of actions are. Beyond that, society needs to be more forgiving when kids screw up (which they can't help but do) and not brand them for life because of early mishaps.
Those are social solutions, setting up technological barriers without addressing the social problems and solutions, you're just making kids better at finding workarounds.
Will it still intercept those messages when kids start inventing new words to have sexual meaning?
They could have let their iPhones keep replacing 'fuck' with 'duck'. :)
So the summary went from an anti sexting patent, some parental control application, to learning Spanish by changing the phone's default language, and finally to close a way to protect our celebrities from their antics.
I don't tend to complain about the summaries, but man I guess I am going to have to go and read the article now to make sense of this summary.
Will it still intercept those messages when kids start inventing new words to have sexual meaning?
Child #1: Yo, man, that party last night was freakin', Smurf!
Child #2: You bet your smurf it was!
Child #1: Hey, I saw you leaving with Sheila.
Child #2: Yeah. Right when we left the party, she started smurfin' me.
Child #1: Shut the smurf up! Right in the smurfing parking lot?
Child #2: Oh, yeah.
Child #1: That's freakin' smurf!
Child #2: You betcha.
Child #1: Freakin' smurf.
(stolen from Family Guy)
My work here is dung.
It seems that with some things, people just don't learn. Online chat sites and forum sites, not to mention spam filters, have tried for years and years now to do exactly what Apple is trying to do, but determined people will just obfuscate censored words, use completely different words, euphemisms, or use leet-speak. Combine all the above and they may as well be speaking in Navajo (and I wouldn't put it past them to try that, too). Aside from practical considerations, isn't this just treating the symptom rather than addressing the problem?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
"If you're parenting skills aren't up to snuff, Apple's got a patent on the device that will allow you to control what you child sends and receives.
This space for rent.
Auto-suggest and autocorrect exists electronically in many forms. Is it necessary to explicitly have a patent depending on the context it is used? That is ridiculous. I would think the novel concept is auto-suggest/correct and putting it in the context of SMS is just implementation details. Is there an auto-correct/censorship patent on smoke signals? If not, I think I better rush out and get it because that would be a novel concept.
So the summary went from an anti sexting patent, some parental control application, to learning Spanish by changing the phone's default language, and finally to close a way to protect our celebrities from their antics.
I don't tend to complain about the summaries, but man I guess I am going to have to go and read the article now to make sense of this summary.
Well, I apologize for the apparently incomprehensible summary. I didn't say anything at all about changing the phone's default language. The phone would just ensure that the child is sending or receiving messages with a certain amount of Spanish in them to ensure the child learns Spanish. Basically this patent could be used for censorship and/or replacement. That entails a lot of things and the patent itself alludes to a lot of possibilities. The media jumps on the 'think of the children' point of view but I tried to point out adults need it just as well. This could include anything from blocking certain folks from seeing certain words to replacing English words with Spanish in order to facilitate learning.
You're not going to read the patent but if you read the summary:
Systems, devices, and methods are provided for enabling a user to control the content of text-based messages sent to or received from an administered device. In some embodiments, a message will be blocked (incoming or outgoing) if the message includes forbidden content. In other embodiments, the objectionable content is removed from the message prior to transmission or as part of the receiving process. The content of such a message is controlled by filtering the message based on defined criteria. The criteria may be defined according to a parental control application. These techniques also may be used, in accordance with instructional embodiments, to require the administered devices to include certain text in messages. These embodiments might, for example, require that a certain number of Spanish words per day be included in e-mails for a child learning Spanish.
Of course given Apple's history, we can only wonder what kind of censorship they're trying to facilitate. It's about filtering text messages and e-mails (which I guess are starting to blend on smart phones). Sorry to stymie you with specific possibilities of what the patent could be used for.
My work here is dung.
Listening Bonita Farve????
Let people raise their kids. Unless they are some of the mentally ill who are an actual danger to their kids, they will do a better job of it than the government or a corporation. They know their kids better than you or I do and most parents intend at least to do the best for their kids. If they want to censor their kids' communications and monitor it to some extent, I'm fine with that. There is some point you have to teach your kids to have some integrity and to be trustworthy when you can't verify all their actions right away, but when that point comes varies by child. Any technology that helps a parent keep up with the technology their kids are using is great, as long as that's who is using it.
What's bad is when people get censored by the government or other powerful groups outside the rightful sphere of influence. Parents should be able to tell their kids what they can and can't read, watch, or say. Companies should be able to tell employees what they can and can't say on behalf of the company. Courts should be able to tell people they can't libel and slander. Police should be able to tell people they can't make death threats or harass people. Schools, employers, store or restaurant managers, social organizations, party hosts, and the hosts of any other gathering of people should be able to ask people to leave who as disruptive (although they shouldn't be able to have the people removed from public places nearby).
Voluntary censorship within your own organization is fine. Say it with me: "Voluntary censorship within your own organization is fine." Just like BDSM, it's when it's forced upon you that censorship is a problem.
Brett Favre just traded in his iPhone for an Android phone, story at 11. :)
Well, apparently in your case your parents didn't monitor enough. Look, now you're on slashdot!
It is very difficult to define correct grammar, to start with. (Note false positive for preposition stranding)
Moreover, spelling corrections may disrupt the vital Cupertino between parent and child. (Note Cupertino effect)
Thus I would expect such controls to have no effect, once or ever. (eggcorn)
Because of times when splitting the infinitive is required, I would never expect demand to more than double from where it is today.
Should the passive voice be allowed?
etc.
Technology can't enforce grammar rules effectively.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Human sexuality terrifies Steve Jobs.
When it came to how I grew up, it was very lax, to say the least. I could go where I wanted, do what I wanted, and I never ended up getting in trouble, ever. No drugs, no nothing. It's when parents try to start controlling every little thing their kids do that they want to start lying and doing the things their parents tell them to do. PROTIP: Let them have some freedom once in a while. If you notice your child starts to become evasive when you ask them questions or just evasive in general, then it's time to intervene and ask them what's going on. But if your child thinks they're going to be punished or you're going to be disappointed if they tell you something, they won't do it. Teach them what's acceptable and what isn't and let them find out what happens after that. Don't treat them like babies and have them wearing diapers when they are 32.
DOH!
Free Martian Whores!
I really don't understand why any discussion of a new technology that might possibly be used to limit children in any way is accompanied by an immediate assumption that only terrible parents would use it. This seems like a very simplistic false choice between total freedom and BOFH-style lockdown.
It seems much more reasonable to me to give children freedom appropriate to their age, but also use tech to limit that freedom where that makes sense. Of course technology is no replacement for supervision or for judgement. Of course any technological limit can be broken or circumvented by someone with enough time and patience. But that doesn't mean there is absolutely no place for using tech to enforce rules.
-Esme
"He noticed that she never used Newspeak words except the ones that had passed into everyday use. She had never heard of the Brotherhood, and refused to believe in its existence. Any kind of organized revolt against the Party, which was bound to be a failure, struck her as stupid. The clever thing was to break the rules and stay alive all the same. He wondered vaguely how many others like her there might be in the younger generation people who had grown up in the world of the Revolution, knowing nothing else, accepting the Party as something unalterable, like the sky, not rebelling against its authority but simply evading it, as a rabbit dodges a dog."
From 1984 by George Orwell
Just a quick info on a product that is from a woman in my town here in Norway. I think this has a huge potential and is targeting parents with kids from 7-10 years old.
Bipper.com is a simple sim-card with a the code included in the sim-card that makes you monitor and select who can call and text your children etc. There is also a code the child can call and then the phone will call persons in a ring until one answers. The location of the phone will also be sent. Since it's all on the sim-card it will work on most phones, even old phones that you most probably will give your youngsters.
Since almost every word in the English language can be used in some sexual reference, I suppose this patent just blocks all text. For example, "I want to go logging up your canyon until you landslide all over my boulders." Now, that is not even cleaver, and I am sure that anyone who really can write will suggest prose that make my slight example seem corny. The point is that such censorship is futile and moronic. However, it does get a lot of press...
Please let me automatically filter out every text message I receive that has "u" or "k" as a standalone word, or "thx".
"increasing the number of Spanish words your child receives so that they can better learn Spanish."
Um, like, how does that work? Add in some Spanish words? Make sh*t up?
If they are getting Spanish already, 'increasing the number' sounds stupid. If they are not, 'increasing the number' sounds stupid.
Sorry, but the idea that they can 'increase the number', that was stupid.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
How does this patent not get smacked down like a narc at a biker rally?
It's no different than the 'profanity' filters on forums and chat systems in video games.
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1996-01-23/ They're trying to prevent teenagers from talking about sex. Teenagers. Sex. Good fucking luck.
There's an app for that.
-David
Apple gets awarded a patent for filtering text, and all people are talking about is parenting?
Be seeing you...
Two words: Clbuttig mistake.
Before I was a parent I thought I was an expert too. Only after do you realize that being a kid isn't the same as raising one.
I have four, ranging from age 4 to 15+. As a parent I welcome any help I can get.