Comment by science4sail
3 years ago
From the timestamps, I guess that this blurb[0] dates from the tail end of the DRM wars[1]. It's fascinating how the enshittification of various online services have led to a resurgence of that era's anti-establishment attitudes.
[0] possibly copy-pasted from an earlier 4chan post? The language style certainly seems to match.
[1] https://xkcd.com/86/ and https://xkcd.com/488/ and https://xkcd.com/546/
I'm almost certain it's a 4chan "greentext" originally, yes.
It's from the time around the introduction of the Xbox One, which, as one of many policies for the console that were unpopular and ultimately rolled back before release, was going to require the Kinect camera to be plugged in for the console to function.
By this time there was already a well-known Black Mirror episode out involving computer vision tracking to ensure people really watched ads, so these ideas were floating around in the culture. As well as Sony's "say McDonald's to end the ad" patent surfacing around that time.
The xkcd comics you link to would have been quite a few years earlier... the reference to Sony then probably more for the controversy with the rootkit on their CDs, as well as their efforts to lock down Blu-ray discs.
>By this time there was already a well-known Black Mirror episode out involving computer vision tracking to ensure people really watched ads, so these ideas were floating around in the culture. As well as Sony's "say McDonald's to end the ad" patent surfacing around that time.
In addition, Microsoft actually filed a patent for a system that would use the Kinect to track how many people were in the room when watching rented movies, and upcharge you if you exceeded a certain number of people.
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/26574/microsoft_patent_could_...