Role of Technology in Media Censorship

Have you ever seen the ads running during prime time? Watching a game or a G rated movie with your kid requires a constant run for the remote to block inappropriate ads. It is the same while watching a funny video on YouTube with unexpected and undesired content flashing all around you. Today you can block access based on channels or specific time slots but that approach is too coarse grained. We need to look at censorship differently.

There are so many ideas, already implemented elsewhere, that can be applied to this problem. Let's take the phone industry. They can measure every phone call down to the second and decide how to bill you based on the package you have bought.

The key to the solution is thinking cohesively about media creation, media distribution and media access. We rate media in a coarse grained way and hence it is impossible to control it at the access point. Imagine the possibility of having a viewer rating preference button on the remote. While watching a sports game with your kid you switch to the G viewership mode. The access point - TV, IPTV on your computer or your mobile wireless device - detects your viewer rating preference and replaces an ad for an R rated movie with an ad for a G rated movie.

The realisation of such a cohesive solution lies in innovation around three areas.

• Media creation: Create content with adaptable delivery e.g. Being able to watch an R rated movie in G mode and being able to make this decision half way through the movie
• Media distribution: Increasingly we are moving towards dynamic content and contextual ads. Take into account the user preference for rating of the content.
• Media access: Enable the user to have the ability to add rating as one of his viewing preferences

As far as technology is concerned, the media industry needs to get out of the singular focus of how to protect & monetize content. Let's get the technology crowd creative and change the way we get entertained.