• Ars Technica, Monday, October 20, 2008 11:45 AM

Anyone who's played enough video games against anonymous users online knows that decorum--particularly when it comes to language--tends to suffer. Beat someone badly enough in Halo 3, or suffer a serious enough butt-whooping, and you are likely to have a few F-bombs dropped into your headset. So in 2004, Microsoft applied for a patent for real-time censoring of audio streams.

The patent has finally been granted, giving Microsoft the go-ahead to use its technology that can digitally recognize profane words and delete them from the conversation. But could the technology be applied elsewhere? TV networks have gotten in big trouble in recent years over similar slips of the tongue, initiating the wide-spread adoption of 7-second delays for live TV. Did Microsoft just become the sole provider of the best technology to solve that issue?

Ars Technica goes so far as to imagine some more sinister application. "Imagine the same system applied to digital telephony, then think how valuable such a system might be to an authoritarian regime?" A government like Burma or China could use such technology to repress digital communications among dissidents. So let's hope Microsoft is careful about whom they license this to.

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