https://archive.org/details/LegalGeekEp71
Spoilers are a phenomenon which really did not exist before the sharing of information on the Internet. Going back all the way to shows like The X-Files and online message boards, fans of story-based television have often wanted to experience the surprise plot twists and highs and lows of narrative without having someone tell them beforehand what is going to happen. With DVR and streaming services now making time-shifting of television the standard for many viewers, plus the omnipresent existence of social media linking us all together more than ever, spoilers have hit an all-time high in relevance.
Mainstream media and the public understand this phenomenon more than ever, as proven by the mostly successful public drive to avoid spreading of spoilers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens when it came out last year. However, even well-meaning media outlets can make mistakes and accidental spoilers just by selecting the wrong photo to put in a twitter post about an episode review, as was the case with a photo of Melisandre which Slate.com initially put on Twitter this week.
Can this spoiler problem be solved? Google certainly thinks so, and it's patent department is riding in like a white knight with multiple patents to try and save the day from spoilers. Even this week, Google was granted another in a series of patents which are innovating in ways to help avoid spoilers.
Going back to 2011 and 2012, Google was first granted two U.S. Patents including 8,676,911 on timeshifting messages located in forums and message boards online based on content which has not yet been reached by a user watching a TV show or the like. In 2015, Google was granted U.S. Patent No. 8,943,529 which claims a system for evaluating when a user changes the channel whether what is on the channel contains spoilers for content yet to be viewed, such as by avoiding tuning to a channel in the middle of an episode being saved for later viewing on the DVR.
Later in 2015, additional patents like U.S. Patent No. 9,002,942 were granted to Google on more broad claims covering the processing and determination of content spoilers, so that a spoiler warning can be given to pertinent users of social media or other technology before a spoiling occurs. Even this past week, one of the image processing and sharing technologies Google is developing as the backbone for implementing this spoiler stopping technology received another granted U.S. Patent No. 9,325,783. Additional applications are published or in the works as well, which means Google is tackling this spoiler monster with a plethora of patents.
If Google can make these patented technologies the new standard for content processing online, the problem of spoilers may indeed be mostly solved, once and for all. Well, at least except for that jerk at the water cooler at work who speaks too loudly about what he watched live last night.
The Bottom Line is, despite software and business method patents being on shakier ground following some recent Supreme Court decisions, the efforts of Google prove that these types of patents are not dead, especially when addressing problems like spoilers that only became very prevalent thanks to current television and social media technologies and trends. In other words, spoilers are dead, long live spoilers.
----------------------------------
Thanks for reading. Please provide feedback and legal-themed questions as segment suggestions to me on Twitter @BuckeyeFitzy
No comments:
Post a Comment