Arnold Zwicky at the Language Log posts on the odd logic Apple uses to insert asterisks in words on iTunes in order to not offend ("Automatic Asterisking").
I guess.
I, too, have noticed some of the same things Zwicky did, such as "[a]sterisking affects the song titles and the album titles, and with (so far as I can tell) perfect consistency -- but, bizarrely, NEVER affects the name of the artist(s)." Apple's software also asterisks some words that can have an offensive connotation, but many times do not. Zwicky lists a few of these, but he misses cum.
To be sure, cum as slang has a very sexual meaning, and Apple may have an argument in asterisking "I C*m Blood" by Cannibal Corpse. But the word is also a slang spelling for come, as in "C*m On Feel the Noize" by Quiet Riot, and it is even a Latin word meaning with or plus. But the software makes no disctintions between slang or dead languages, and even "Summa C*m Laude" by Rudy Adrian gets its perfunctory little star.
No software can censor with as much refinement as the human mind precisely because the English language is alive, varied, and richly complex. It takes a living mind to truly grasp the language, and, until computers actually think as we do, we will continue to get risible results from such efforts as that employed on iTunes.
But that's OK. We all need a good chuckle from time to time.
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