The War on Words — part 1

Submitted by rernst on Fri, 11/30/2007 - 2:19pm

Equal, But Opposite

I'm confident it's not a 20th century invention to use words to mean the opposite of what they conventionally mean. But it certainly is pervasive. And annoying. And very, very dangerous.

Something I saw somewhere:

"English is the language that lets you talk until you figure out what to say"

Take for example, the phrase 'Digital Rights Management protections', which I came across recently.

For those who don't know, 'Digital Rights Management' software has the goal of removing and controlling *your* right with regard to digital objects. So it's got nothing to do with rights: just restrictions.

In the same sense, 'protections' is nothing of the sort. They're more like 'prohibitions'. So, we transform 'Digital Rights Management protections' into 'Digital Restrictions Management prohibitions'.

Doesn't that sound more like what DRM really does? And it's so convenient: just two similar words.

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