Google Patents Using iPhones To Kill 'Free Bird'

[wraggster]

At Chicago's Billy Goat Tavern (http://www.billygoattavern.com/home.html), construction workers found physical threats an effective way to discourage smart-ass Whitney Young High School (http://www.wyoung.org/) students from playing annoying jukebox songs over and over again. But with Google's newly-patented technology for the Collaborative Rejection of Media for Physical Establishments (http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?patentnumber=8,176,101), you no longer need to resort to violence to prevent Elton John Songs from being played (http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7228/7164536982_b50b28d885_b.jpg) on jukeboxes in bars. Its invention, boasts Google, 'enables customers of an establishment to collaboratively reject a media file that is currently playing and/or pending to be played within that establishment by entering data into a personal wireless portable computing device on their person, for example a cellular telephone.' But don't get your hopes up too high, kids. Much like Google's dual-tier stock plan (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-13/google-stock-plan-irks-governance-watchdogs.html), the patent calls for 'customer status levels including a premium status and a standard status,' so a premium customer will be able to veto attempts by lowly standard customers to kill his requests to play MC Hammer's 'Can't Touch This' (http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5461/7164539884_03cfdceb3d_z.jpg). The patent comes from a quirky Outland Research IP portfolio (http://www.seobythesea.com/2011/09/google-picks-up-hardware-and-media-patents-from-outland-research/) acquired by Google; its inventor is Louis B. Rosenberg, a Stanford PhD and professional film maker (http://www.outlandpictures.com/about/louis-rosenberg.php).

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/05/09/163202/google-patents-using-iphones-to-kill-free-bird