Microsoft Seeking to Patent Automatic Censorship

theodp writes "Microsoft is back at the USPTO, this time seeking a patent for the automatic censorship of audio data for broadcast, a system and method for automatically altering audio to prevent undesired words and phrases from being understandable to a listener as originally uttered."

If only

[Travelsonic]

Now if only Slashdot woild only patent all variants of the "First Post" s the ACs would fear lawsuits for posting them.

That's a ________ idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

I ____ _____ that Microsoft would _____ ____ customers and _________ something like ______ ________!!!

Good! Maybe nobody will use it since its patented

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds like a good thing to me. Maybe we can help protect our freedoms by patenting the technologies that try to limit them.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Too late

[HTTP Error 403 403.9]

FoxNews already has prior art on that.

So I guess...

[7macaw]

...no more talking about Linux on the radio, eh?

Congratulate them..

[Goalie_Ca]

For geeks writting OSS this is absolutely harmless... in fact i can see this being a good thing. If they're the only company allowed to use super cookies and have auto-censorship then the world is a better place :D

Re:New Words

[jbr439]

What the frell are you talking about?

I _ _ _'_ believe it!

[backslashdot]

A few years ago _ _ I was having my dinner, I thought of this very same idea. Instead of c _ _ _inuing to eat, I should have put down my _ _ _ _ and got a sh _ _ _ of paper to write the idea down. Oh well, I _ _ _'_ do anything abou_ _ _ now. I got another great idea but this time my _ _ _ _ _ out of ink. ...

Re:Well, sounds like a good idea

[Alien Being]

Fuck the Xbox.
Fuck Microsoft.
Fuck the 9 year-olds.

M.J.

Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Let us take a fine example from the wonderful lore of Douglas Adams and simply replace every one of our cuss words with the galaxy's worst word: Belgium.

Belgium to those Belgiuming Belgiumers who censor our every Belgiuming word!

f--- that!

[raider_red]

Why should I need that? I should be able to say whatever f---ing s--- I want too. Any A--hole who says otherwise can suck my d---.

Most. Trollish. Slashdot. Article. Ever.

[Mr.Bananas]

Wow, I didn't think it would be possible to bring together so many things that Slashdot readers love to hate into one single post, but this article has almost done it:

- Microsoft
- Software Patents
- Censorship

Now, if only Microsoft could extend or apply this patent to automatically censor the topics "evolution" and "open source" ...

Re:New Words

[xixax]

Someone ought to Gates those Clippys up the Allchin and kick them in the Balmers for coming up with an idea that's so WinFS.

Excellent!

[siddesu]

If that means that noone else will be able to implement automated censoring without paying a license fee -- I am all for it ;)

Louie Louie

[craXORjack]

Now if only someone would invent a way to do exactly the opposite so we could find out what the lyrics really are to Louie Louie!

This is Universal

[giafly]

Everyone has two "methods for automatically altering audio to prevent undesired words and phrases from being understandable to a listener as originally uttered."

They're called "Getting Old" and "Getting Married".

Re:Sounds very sick

[elrous0]

It takes actual wit to offend.

Fuck that. That sounds too much like work.

-Eric