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Google Patents Censorship of "Annoying" Content
An anonymous reader writes "Google has been granted a patent for a rating engine that reserves the right to approve or reject content that is published on the Internet. The patent especially refers to advertising and those rather invasive and disturbing blinking ads that exploit the entire range of color pairs that are found displeasing to the human eye: 'The embodiments described herein enable Flash and animated image documents (e.g., advertisements). Some of these types of ads are annoying.' However Google notes that ads are just an 'illustrative example' and the idea could be applied to 'content pages (e.g., web pages), search results, emails, applications, IM messages, audio content or files, video content or files, other files, other data or applications that may reside on one or several (e.g., a network) of computer systems, or other definable concepts or content.'"
. . . they have a patent on censoring content farms and expert sexchange.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Will this allow them to censor trolls??? This will get rid of 99% of the content on the Internet and 4chan won't show on their search results....
Previewing comments are for sissies!
Google will now apply this patent to censor all the annoying crap that gets published by or about Oracle. Payback is a bitch, Larry.
Does the ability of the rating engine correspond to financial payments to Google?
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
patents on pressing keys on a keyboard, moving and clicking a mouse and looking at a computer monitor whether powered on or not.
captcha: contends
lol
So when are religious nutjobs, politicians and NewsCorp going to be "censored" off my internet? Why stop at that internet, can Google please remove these annoying entities from the planet?
but they really have a tasteful approach to their advertising. On their sites and services, the plain-text ads go almost un-noticed. I'm glad to see them making an attempt to get rid of the 'You won! Shoot the monkey to claim your prise!' type ads. Next up: content farms.
mod patent down.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
The only people who find anything annoying (i.e. with an over reactive persona) are going to also have a deformed sense of aesthetics. You'll wind up with horrid aphasic color schemes. No one with a normal psyche would have that sense of emotional over reaction.
I'm not sure exactly what it'll censor, TBH. I mean, even they identify flash ads as the main problem it applies to, but it's not like most of those flashing or fake UI ads were coming from Google in the first place. And I should hope that google didn't index the ads on the page. (If I search for, say, "Rift MMO", I want to get to its home page or a page relevant somehow to it, not just to some unrelated gaming site that has an ad for Rift.)
There aren't many sites I've seen that actually have such content as part of their own page. Most sites would be quite happy to not have any such crap, but get it in ads actually.
So exactly what will Google reject there? Sites which signed with other ad providers than Google? Or will it be just an irrelevant filter that only rejects a couple of annoying newbies' pages that wouldn't rank as particularly relevant for any search anyway?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Too bad they patented it. Every site would benefit from this...
if (ad.provider == GOOGLE_ADS) return true; else return false;
The country-specific google sites don't all support site blocking. In particular, google.ca doesn't.
lol u tk him 2 da bar|?
(user was banned for this post)
Oh, this would have been so useful for about 90% of the "content" on GeoCities.
This tech really works!
"Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad." [Ecclesiastes 7:3]
does that mean i can block google ads now? =)
On the same note, while they're at censoring ads, I'd like to see crap censored that includes:
- before/after images that either aren't even the same person, or are the same thing with a different zoom factor. Seen it from penis enlargement pills to diets to God knows what else. Yeah, it's soo not insulting my intelligence to try to sell me a diet where the before and after aren't even the same person.
- all those retarded "free IQ test" ads that actually have nothing to do with IQ, but are just ambiguous images that have no right or wrong answer. Sorry, if I'm to trust anyone to give me an IQ test, it kinda helps if the ad doesn't convince me up front that they're drooling morons who don't even understand what IQ means.
Though a new low in stupidity was such an IQ ad recently which was about solving a maze... where blatantly one end was completely walled in and quite within a short distance of it too. As in, next square.
- ads which are unskipable movies, and with sound too. I don't give a fuck about what colours they are in, nor about whether they blink or not. In an age where bandwidth caps are becoming the norm, and are sometimes measured in single digit gigabytes, serving a 100 MB video as an ad is just plain old evil. I don't care how important some cretin PHB thinks his new product is, if they waste so much of everyone's resources for it, they should be not just censored, but taken out back, put in a sack and beaten savagely with a stick. But I'll settle for just censorship too.
- ads served in the wrong dimension. I mean, not only it's some annoying animation, but now it's something that was in horizontal banner format and is squeezed and stretched in a vertical banner box. So not only it blinks and makes funny noises, but I can't even read what the fuck is it trying to sell me, even if just to avoid those idiots.
Etc.
Yeah, yeah, I know, there are plugins that do that. But, hey, if Google is going to take over the web, they might as well solve that problem for everyone. Right? :p
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The title should have been: Google Patents "Censorship" of Annoying Content.
I don't see how this is any different (in application - in implementation maybe) from something like AdBlock, or even the exiting ability to block images, Javascript, etc in a browser's settings. As long as the user has the ability to override it, it's *not* censorship, it's a content filtering feature - one that many people would *like*.
At last we'll be free of these POS.
Considering Microsoft's insanely aggressive bogo-patent onslaught; who could blame google for aquiring as many patents as possible.
M$ flogs ANOTHER Android license
http://www.dailymarkets.com/stock/2011/06/29/microsoft-and-velocity-micro-inc-sign-patent-agreement-covering-android-based-devices/
REDMOND, Wash., June 29, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Microsoft Corp. and Velocity Micro, Inc., have signed a patent agreement that provides broad coverage under Microsoft’s patent portfolio for Velocity Micro, Inc., Android-based devices, including Velocity Micro, Inc.’s Cruz Tablet. Although the contents of the agreement have not been disclosed, the parties indicate that Microsoft will receive royalties from Velocity Micro, Inc., under the agreement. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20000822/MSFTLOGO) “We are pleased to have reached this agreement with Velocity Micro, Inc., to address and secure IP rights for its Android-based Cruz tablet devices,” said Horacio Gutierrez, corporate vice president and deputy general counsel of Intellectual Property and Licensing at Microsoft. Randy Copeland, CEO of Velocity Micro, Inc., said, “By entering into this agreement with Microsoft, Velocity Micro, Inc., will be able to better meet the needs of our customers with the introduction of exciting new Cruz tablets having increased performance and functionality.” Microsoft’s Commitment to Licensing Intellectual Property The patent agreement is another example of the important role intellectual property (IP) plays in ensuring a healthy and vibrant IT ecosystem. Since Microsoft launched its IP licensing program in December 2003, the company has entered into more than 700 licensing agreements and continues to develop programs that make it possible for customers, partners and competitors to access its IP portfolio. The program was developed to open access to Microsoft’s significant R&D investments and its growing, broad patent and IP portfolio.
According to the claim language, it requires a seed document to function so it's definitely not the same as the /. mod system.
/. Mod system wouldn't work.
I'm not saying that there isn't relevant prior art for this... I actually think there probably is, I just can't think of a good example off hand. In this case though, the
So you mean it works like /.'s comment moderation system?
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
I researched the web using google chrome with the annoying content filter on and i could not find any software patents of third parties regarding my product. Also the TOS fields in the web were always empty.
Don't patents have to be non-obvious? What the hell isn't obvious about blocking annoying shit?
The have a patent for a combination of ad/flash block?
I always wanted Google to calculate page ranks by gauging "Page Crap Factor". Of course, I'd really like Page Crap to include Google ads too. I won't hold my breath!
Truth and facts really are annoying to most liberals.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
but there already a means to block it all
It seems to me that once they have this technology in place, it would be a very simple matter to re-purpose it, to, say, provide restricted search results in China based on Chinese government censorship, provide restricted search results in Iran based on what the Iranian government wants censored, or produce a special "evangelical" search page that only produces pages friendly to creationism, Biblical literalism, etc.
Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but I think such a tool could be used for things that are counterproductive to the very things that make the Internet the most powerful force for democratization we've seen since the invention of the movable type printing press.
But Google makes money from ads, and this sounds like what the Adblock extension already does. Does anyone think they got this patent is so they can remove that extension for violating it?
Patents like this are annoying. This is obvious. It fails the patentability test. Google is doing evil.
This will save them a great deal of time in adapting to each country's political climate. I presume they will have a way to make some votes count more than others.
Gee, what a novel idea. Hey wait, don't we already have several examples of this already...
How convenient...
When are they going to shut down the massive content farms that show google ads and continue to pollute their search results? I wish bing wasn't such a disaster so I could switch to something else.. sigh :(
Stop.
You know how they love to yell at you till you stop using facts on them.
It is not nice to troll the liberals. Also there is no skill involved. They are Stupid, Loving, Hate Filled, Free Spirits who love the earth more than their own children.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
...with mod up or down.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Just how stupid are the people at the Patent Office? People are born being able to detect "annoying" content. Is there nothing that they won't grant a patent for?
This comment has been deemed annoying
Now here is a solution! Patent the act of 'placing annoying content on a website' and then let Google rake in the money. The benefit to the world at large is that the "annoying" content goes away and we the users/readers are left with just the mundane and easy to ignore advertising content, the way the world should be. Unfortunately there is already plenty of prior art to fight such a patent.
human nature presents sooner or later in all its ugliness.
... or other definable concepts
They just couldn't keep themselves from taking a piss on the patent system, haha.
There is still quite a bit of content slipping past my filter bubble that I wish I could get rid of. Wouldn't it be nice if google were able to scrub, clean, and filter 100% of the content that you get from the internet? Why can't I just pay someone to spoon feed me what I want to hear?
http://adblockplus.org
Why rate ads when you can block them just as easily?
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
Step one, make it so if we want to rid ourselves of your obnoxious instant search it fucking sticks for more than a week
Could they start filing lawsuits against people who develop software that blocks annoying content? Thinking of things like AdBlock. It would be beneficial for them to own the patent for this, simply so that people couldn't legally write software to screen Google ads...
F U C K google(.)
The ads over the video in youtube, those are specially annoying, and even sadistic when the video has subtitles.
It's nice to see "something" was actually patented. Seemed like for a while there everything getting patented was nothing but "ideas" and no actual solid product. Yay innovation
The summary of the patent does not actually describe what the patent is about. I know, it's shocking to think that such a thing could happen on slashdot.
Claim 1 is: 1. A computer-implemented method of approving a document, the method comprising: analyzing content of a first document to identify one or more first portions, wherein the first portions are visual, textual, or audio portions; identifying one or more second documents that are similar to the first document, wherein the one or more second documents have second portions that are visual, textual, or audio portions; based upon computer code that describes the first portions and the second portions, determining whether any of the first portions are substantially identical to the second portions that have been predetermined to be unacceptable; and approving the first document only if none of the first portions are substantially identical to the second portions that have been predetermined to be unacceptable.
But let's not do anything crazy like actually reading the patent before we start discussing it...
I am just curious...once 3D technology evolves, the advertisers would want to cash in on that...you open a website and splat! a pie hits your face!
A good 91.9566348% (of the remaining) profiles on MySpace will be inaccessible when this patent is implemented!
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
The term censorship is clearly inflammatory, but is it correct?
I submit that it is not correct in this case. Censorship differs from moderation in that it relies on force as opposed to voluntary agreement.
For example, Slashdot is not censoring comments, it is moderating comments, because Slashdot owns its servers and service. I am visiting Slashdot voluntarily and Slashdot is a private service.
On the other hand, ICE is censoring (not moderating) websites, because it is using government force to intervene on private property.