“Your Kindle has blocked 144 expletives”

“Your Kindle has blocked 144 expletives”

In a recent

Amazon Kindle Community thread

a potential Kindle buyer asked an interesting and controversial question.

Could a Kindle be set to block certain words?

In other words, could you tell it to black out obscenities so you didn’t end up seeing them?

Not surprisingly, this inspired some…less than helpful responses (although there were helpful ones as well).

Some people saw it as potential censorship.

Well, I do think the idea shows an understanding of some of the potentials of the software.

Let’s look at this a few ways:

1. Could it be done?
2. Would it be legal?
3. What would it mean?

Could it be done?

I would think so, yes.  While it might not be easy to alter the original file, I would thin a display change would be possible…or a second, Bowdlerized* copy could be created. 

You could either create a list of forbidden words, and/or choose from presets. 

The words could be blacked out, or, more intriguingly, converted into other words.

This would be easy to set up in a word processing program like Microsoft Word.  I could do it with macros.  Hmm…you could even do it so that, if you selected the word, you’d see a definition of it, without seeing the actual word.

I remember having seen a play once, which was a satire on a Sherlock Holmes type sleuth (the name escapes me for now).

One person called the detective an “effing idiot” (without using effing), to which I recall him responding something like,

“I don’t think it’s fair of you to categorize me as an idiot…copulating or otherwise.”

🙂

That makes it clear.

So no, I don’t think this would be terribly complicated.

Would it be legal?

That’s an entirely different question.

If you had to break the DRM (Digital Rights Management) of the rightsholder to do it, that’s generally illegal (there are certain specific exceptions).

Let’s say that wasn’t necessary: let’s say the program read the words and rewrote them, with the desired substitutions.

I don’t think anybody would come after an individual who did this, but they might go after a manufacturer of the program…successfully.

Why?

The resulting work would be a derivative work…a new work based on the original.  This would particularly be true if it replaced certain words with other words.

The right to make derivative works is protected under copyright.

For example, you can’t adapt a book into a play without permission of the rightsholder,  generally.

What if it just blocked the words?

That’s debatable…arguably, the resultant work is different from the original.

Again, I don’t think anybody would go after a person for doing this…but if someone made software that did it, that could be a problem.

That has been one of the arguments against text-to-speech: that the Kindle’s “read-aloud” feature (which is Nuance’s RealSpeak) creates a derivative work.

That’s clearly not true, the way I read the relevant copyright law.  Since the reading isn’t recorded, a work isn’t created.  Streaming audio is okay, making sound files is not.

Hmmm….that argues that blacking out the words in a temporary fashion might be okay, if it didn’t create a new file with the black-outs in place.

Would authors object to this?  Oh, I’m sure some would object…vociferously.  I’m sure some authors would rather not have their tough heroes saying, “Rats!” or “Fiddlesticks!”  😉

“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a darn.”

It changes the intent, and the author might feel they have the right to control that intended impact on the reader.

There used to be a great site called the T’inator that converted sites into Mr. T speak, and replaced pictures with his picture.  You could turn CNN into Mr. T talk, for example…you’d get the real stories, but in T speak.

The Dialectizer  “translates” sites into different dialects…but let me warn you, even the names of the dialects may offend some people.

Is that legal?

I assume so.  It’s like using the Google online translator, and since nobody has sued and stopped that, I assume that’s okay.

I think it’s because the output isn’t recorded…just like the streaming audio of text-to-speech.

What would it mean?

This is the part that interests me the most.

Certainly, a lot of people are going to say that any alteration of a literary work is inappropriate.

I think there are a sizable percentage, though, that would like to see certain obscenities blocked.  It does throw me sometimes if I encounter those words unexpectedly in a book I am otherwise enjoying.  I absolutely think the author has the right to use them, even though I don’t use them myself.  I completely see how they can be appropriate, even necessary, in the expression of the character’s intent.

However, I know there are other people who don’t want to see the words.

That’s another key point: which words?

What if it included the “n word”, for example?  That might change the experience of some really classic works.  In fact, that word may be deliberately used to shock the reader and show the way a negative character thinks and speaks.

What if you could chose to replace all gender-specific terminology with gender-neutral terms? 

I actually tend to do that in my writing…not identify the genders of the characters.  I know people assume there own genders for them, and that’s fine with me. 

What if it wasn’t words?  What if it was concepts?  Could you have a Kindle block a scene involving sexual assault?  How would it identify it?  How much would it block?  That’s much trickier.

Let’s take this a bit further.  What if you could use software to block or “convert” characters of a given sexual orientation?

What if you could choose to convert the characters in a book to a certain ethnicity or change the locality?

That’s probably starting to feel wrong…but if you were doing it for yourself, would it be okay?

 I can see how it could be fun, and maybe even educational.  What if you could “dial” the language in a work from Old to Middle to Modern English?  That might help people with some older works.  How about switching it from British to American English or vice versa?

It’s a fascinating idea…or as some might say, a *%/@! good idea.  😉

* Thomas Bowdler published the Family Shakespeare in 1807, and did other similarly “clean versions”.  His name became the verb Bowdlerize, which is to produce a less offensive version of a work.

Weird coincidence: I watched an episode an episode of Fame which dealt with a school book with words blacked out…the day before the thread appeared.

Tip of the day: there are a number of Christian publishers who make books available for the Kindle, and they do not tend to use swear words.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.