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."

Re:Parenting skills?

[kungfugleek]

Not monitoring anything isn't good parenting either.

Re:Parenting skills?

[AnonymousClown]

I don't care. As long as they live under MY Roof, they will use correct grammar and spelling when they send nudie texts.

Easier said than done.

I'm in a predicament. Should I punish the child for spelling it "cumming" instead of "coming"?

Re:Parenting skills?

[LordKronos]

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.

I saw a story on the local news a few weeks ago. This mother had been monitoring her daughters text message and call logs to see what she had been up to. Nothing suspicious ever came up. Then she learned of a service that the cell carrier provided that would let her log on and monitor the communications that had taken place with the account. She did that and found out that there had been lots of sexting going on among a half dozen or so of her friends. It turns out her daughter had been outwitting her all the time by deleting the offending messages from the history. So you are right, kids definitely will figure out ways around things.

However, here's the part of the story the really got to me and showed what a terrible parent she was. When she found out, she reported all the details to the police. Yes, she reported her own kid. I haven't heard the followup to the story, but the police were considering filing charges against the kids. If they handle this the way a lot of other places I've read about do, then this mother just gave her daughter a place on the sex offenders registry. She may have screwed up her daughters entire future.

Or...

[BetterSense]

"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

Re:Parenting skills?

[mysidia]

create generations of kids that are good at hacking their way out of oppressive measures whom have little respect for authority.

Either that or kids who have learned that 'oppressive measures', micromanagement, and overbearing authority are normal.

You are assuming the parents don't break their children down and force them to comply with oppressive measures.

Resulting in kids trained to be docile, even later in life, when the government starts to further trample on inalienable human rights.