Approved: Apple's 'Anti-Sexting' Software Patent
Apple has just been awarded a patent for what people are already calling 'anti-sexting' software.
Kids these days and their cell phones -- you just never know what they're talking about with their friends. Fear not, Apple can help you! TechCrunch reports that the Cupertino, California-based company has just been awarded a patent for a "text-based communication control for personal communication device." The patent description claims that there is "no way to monitor and control text communications to make them user appropriate," and goes on to give children sending and receiving messages with objectionable language as an example.
"Users such as children may send or receive messages (intentionally or not) with parentally objectionable language," it reads.
The software would allow parents to implement parental controls that evaluate whether or not the message in question contains only approved words. If an unauthorized word is detected, it can be omitted from the message, and the application could alert the user or a designated third party to the presence of the unauthorized text. The application may require the user to replace the unauthorized text with words that are allowed, or it may automatically delete the offending words. A third option is that the application would just delete the entire message.
However, despite it being easy to assume that anti-porn Apple's main goal for this software is to help parents prevent kids from swearing or telling each other all about their naughty, hormone-induced urges, it seems the company is also aiming to improve language education.
The abstract for the filing says that although some incoming or outcoming messages could be blocked if they contain "forbidden content," parental controls also make it possible for the phone to require certain text be present in messages. The company goes on to give the example that you could require a certain number of Spanish words per day to be included in emails if your child is learning Spanish.
Check out full details of the patent here.
Source: TechCrunch
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Can it return the message to the sender if it's written in ALL CAPS? If so sign me up!
Considering how kids spell these days, that software is going to have to work really really hard to catch stuff.
Yay, now any phone company that wants to implement a filter will have to pay apple.
In other news, 11 year old kids know more swear words than their clueless parents regardless of the censorship imposed on their lives.
I like the idea...
However, I think this will just encourage the kids to invent their own language where the offending words are masked inside plain old non-offensive words.
so that covers sex-based ascii art. wonder when they will move on to media file-based communication.
How in the hell could Apple get a patent approved on this. There is prior art on text based keyword / bad language filtering from way back in the BBS text chat days. The US PTO doesn't have a clue and just doesn't do the research before approving these bogus patents. I guess Apple now gets to sue anyone who puts a bad language filter into their smart phone?
These big companies are just falling over themselves to patent every idea they can come up with, no matter how stupid or obvious...or with how much prior art.
It's censoring software. It's not about sexting, it's for censoring conversations by government agencies like China and UAE.
But your mom can use it too.
Yes, that's right, condition citizens to be censored from an early age. They'll be great subservient tools for the police state. As if they aren't already, ripped away from the family and schooled in slavery conditions to state mandated education. None of them had a vote as to whether they have to go to school or not, none of them get paid for a darn bit of work they do at school, and none of them have any free time with homework spilling into all the rest of their lives. Why let them have freedom of speach as well.
This is rediculous and there better be a way to trun it off if it's ever implemented. Honestly, who wants this BS except overprotective parents and the likes of jobs. I don't want some software telling what i can or can't say.
Answer: use 1337 H4X0|2 M4D SKILZZZZ
People can always circumvent these sort of BS, teenagers are very crafty for the credit people give them.
Step 1. Release products with mass market appeal. Step 2. Brainwash owners of products into unthinking loyal drones. Step 3. Test control of drones by releasing inferior broken new product and watch it sell out. Step 4. Convince Drones any problem with new product is caused by them. Step 5. Convince Drones your values are their values and implement forced controls on your products. Step 6. Convice Drones to lash out at others not sharing these values; and to push your products. Step 7. Global Domination.
IT HAS BEGUN!
Time to stock up on Ammo and Droids!
Is that Mr. Burns in the picture?
These kind of restrictions are what takes away your freedom and privacy.
Yes I said privacy cause it can send an alert to a 3rd party.
Whats next, crawl inside the brain and alert a 3rd party when you get horny?? Thought police?
There should be a level of freedom.
Everyday we lose more of our rights. It is like slowly boiling a frog in a pot of water.
Wait until this is made mandatory by network operators.
...how many people that get their kids iphones and **** know what those iphones are capable of? Give a iphone to my parents and they will feel accomplished if they can make a call. Give a iphone to a teenager and they can feel accomplished emptying out the inbox 5 times a day, jailbreaking the iphone, finding new apps, and tons of other stuff. This little censor stuff is not gonna fly for long I believe. Apple is just trying to win over the "concerned" parents because the Andriod phones have hit hit the Iphones hard. Besides kids with "concerned" parents only makes the kids more crafty and clever in hiding and finding a way around things. Just saying not that i have experience in that....really...maybe a little....
*Post edited by moderator* Cool it on the language.
If i had a child, i won't bother giving any cell phone. I don't want to bother the child in school anyway.
...how many people that get their kids iphones and **** know what those iphones are capable of? Give a iphone to my parents and they will feel accomplished if they can make a call. Give a iphone to a teenager and they can feel accomplished emptying out the inbox 5 times a day, jailbreaking the iphone, finding new apps, and tons of other stuff. This little censor stuff is not gonna fly for long I believe. Apple is just trying to win over the "concerned" parents because the Andriod phones have hit hit the Iphones hard. Besides kids with "concerned" parents only makes the kids more crafty and clever in hiding and finding a way around things. Just saying not that i have experience in that....really...maybe a little....
Hehe, reminds me how my dad used to punish me by removing the power cable from the computer
i had plenty of spares.
Y'know, kids could jail break their phones and remove the software...just saying!
Yes, that's right, condition citizens to be censored from an early age. They'll be great subservient tools for the police state. As if they aren't already, ripped away from the family and schooled in slavery conditions to state mandated education. None of them had a vote as to whether they have to go to school or not, none of them get paid for a darn bit of work they do at school, and none of them have any free time with homework spilling into all the rest of their lives. Why let them have freedom of speach as well.
Are you for real? Maybe you're 12.
Having been a kid, it's the easiest part of life. Sure, there are rules, and there are rules for adults too. You are better off learning them earlier than later. What you call censorship is part of what most people call civilization. There have to be limits based on situations, and there are even as adults.
Why would they get paid for doing homework? They are getting homework so they can learn, not because they are performing an act that helps someone else. It gets worse - you have to pay to do homework in college or when you take certification classes.
Here's the reality, children simply do not have the experience to make decisions that could greatly affect their lives. We should let them decide not to go to school, when they don't have the wisdom to fully understand the decision? Granted, parents don't have all the answers, but they generally have a lot more than a 10 year old kid.
Pure freedom is another word for chaos. Chaos doesn't work. We all accept limitations, and sadly, these limitations aren't imposed early enough on kids. They are far more rude, insolent and impertinent than we ever were. I see kids saying things to adults that we'd never even think of. So, sorry, kids are being too spoiled and not prepared properly for life by indifferent parents. Not the reverse.
This is stupid, I know the English language is decimated by todays youth but useless services like Twatter force people to use abbreviations to keep within character limits. Although restricting the length of text messages isn't much of an issue these days as it's just sent as multiple messages, it's still useful to use abbreviations and "txtspeek" to keep message costs down.
txtspeek (or whatever it's called) is constantly evolving with new variations for often inappropriate words surfacing every day. txtspeek is becoming more and more similar to 1337 speak and as it does more variations on words emerge. Good luck to Crapple in catching up with it.
The patent office has certainly been busy lately screwing consumers over by annihilating innovation prospects.
It's about time we killed software patents
oops... guess not. ^_^ sorry.
isnt this called auto filter feature?
apple now own this patent, specifically "sex"ting?
tr
Step 1. Release products with mass market appeal. Step 2. Brainwash owners of products into unthinking loyal drones. Step 3. Test control of drones by releasing inferior broken new product and watch it sell out. Step 4. Convince Drones any problem with new product is caused by them. Step 5. Convince Drones your values are their values and implement forced controls on your products. Step 6. Convice Drones to lash out at others not sharing these values; and to push your products. Step 7. Global Domination. IT HAS BEGUN!Time to stock up on Ammo and Droids!
Step 1. Release products with mass market appeal.
Yeah, I hate when companies do that.
Step 2. Brainwash owners of products into unthinking loyal drones.
By this, I assume you actually meant 'ensure that the products deliver such good customer satisfaction that you establish a good brand reputation. Again, I hate when companies do that.
Step 3. Test control of drones by releasing inferior broken new product and watch it sell out.
By 'inferior broken', I assume you are referring to the one flaw which is on the IPhone 4 which in reality affects nobody at all, doesn't prevent it working, and doesn't detract from the several other ways in which the IPhone 4 is better than pretty much every other phone available?
Step 4. Convince Drones any problem with new product is caused by them.
As bizarre as it may seem for me to back this up, this is actually true. The people who desperately tried to find the 'pressure points' on the phone to get it to lose signal are not normal users of the phone. During normal use there are no problems whatsoever.
Step 5. Convince Drones your values are their values and implement forced controls on your products.
Yeah, I'm sure all the parent 'drones' needed convincing that their children shouldn't be sexting each other. Damn companies who implement policies that all parents agree with.
Step 6. Convice Drones to lash out at others not sharing these values; and to push your products. Step 7. Global Domination. IT HAS BEGUN!Time to stock up on Ammo and Droids!
This is pretty much nonsense.
I am not an Apple fan boy, I'm not an Apple hate-boy either, I think either is pathetic. How can a grown man such as yourself, and pretty much everyone else on this forum, have such an insecure hatred for a COMPANY, pretty much based on the fact that they have an established reputation and a loyal customer following due to their past performance. ANY good company AIMS to deliver the goods to their customers on such a regular basis that they get some loyalty, to just blindly hate on a company for no logical reason is beyond pathetic, to be honest.
Just watch Jobs turn this to to a tool to filter out anti-Apple texts.
Apple wrote in the Patent:
.
.
/Facepalm
In other news, 11 year old kids know more swear words than their clueless parents regardless of the censorship imposed on their lives.
perhaps Apple should hire the kids to run the service ;>
is it just me or is patent law mainly being used to win lawsuits and has about as much common sense involved as your average game of Russian Roulette, seriously there is a patent for a "stick.
alternatively don't give your 11 year old a ******* phone...
*Post edited by moderator* Cool it on the language.
Apple Ten Commandments - already have this covered:
I am the Lord Steve Jobs, your God, who brought you out of the land of Free-gypt, out of the house of Freedom and into slavery;
Do not have any other gods before me your Lord Steve Jobs.
Thou shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in Linux, or that is on Andriod, or that is in Microsoft.
Thou shall not Jailbreak them or use any other iTune alternative; for I the Lord Steve Jobs, your God, am a greedy God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me
You shall not make wrongful use of the name of Steve Jobs the Lord your God, for Steve Jobs the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name with a myriad of armed forces at your doorsteps.
Remember the Jobs-bath day and keep it holy.
For six days you shall labour and do all your work to line my pockets.
But the seventh day is a Jobs-bath to Steve Jobs the Lord your God; you shall not do any work except take all your money and give it to me your Lord Steve Jobs—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns – that also includes you dimwitted idiot reading this.
For in six days the Lord Steve Jobs made magical MP3 Players and Magical Touch Cell Phones, the Magical blown up iTouch call iPad, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord Steve Jobs will bless the Jobs-bath day and consecrated it with the money you lined his pockets with.
Honor your ill informed tech-illiterate friends and family who advised you to buy Apple Products because they are just magical, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord Steve Jobs, your God is giving you.
Thou shall not murder or commit suicide unless you work for me, your Lord Steve Jobs, and or you work at Foxxcon.
Thou shall not commit Sexting for there is an App for that.
Though shall not steal or forget you left Beta Devices in bars or public places. For if you do, face the wrath of A.S.S.E.S (Apple Sentinel Special Employee Squad).
Thou shall not bear false witness against your Apple Products.
Thou shall not covet your neighbor’s Andriod Phone; Thou shall not covet your neighbor’s wife’s Black Berry - or her unless you share with me Your Lord Steve Jobs, or male or female slave’s Nokia Phone, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor that is not a Apple Product.
Apple has gone too far this time
Just when the the lines between "Orwellian" and "Jobsian" are so blurred you cannot see the edges anymore, we have another form of thought control straight from the pages of 1984
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Newspeak_words
All hail the Party, Steve Jobs is Big Brother