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Is it good to have eating contests where people send themselves to the hospital? Is it good to have contests like the World's Strongest Man? Or how about Mr. Puni-verse? Is it good to have contests like the Olympics?

I'm just poking fun here, but my point is: Competition is part of human nature. No matter how worthwhile, odd, unhealthy, or just plain crazy. I can't think of anything we don't compete for or about, somewhere in some culture.

I see your point, that when bad behavior is glorified, more people will behave badly, but intellect will never fully triumph over human nature (i.e., we'll never become Vulcans. But that's a good thing).

Or simply http://olympics.com/.

>The head of the marketing division and IOC vice president, Dick Pound...
I see the IOC was wise enough to choose a marketing VP with a safe, ordinary name wherein no-one could possibly find any innuendo. I wonder what his hobbies are?

>The IOC classifies it as a broadcasting medium...
Surely that's up to lawmakers. Or does the IOC now have global jurisdiction over copyright law?

>Part of the problem for the IOC is that the place of the internet has yet to be accurately defined.
No problem. The Committee can use its new-found legal powers to define the place of the Internet as 23 degrees 4 minutes south, 12 degrees 18 minutes east.

>There was also pressure for a ban on pictures on the internet from the American broadcaster, NBC...
Yes, I can see the world's governments banning Olympic coverage. Anything to please the all-important NBC.

>NBC's controversial decision to show no live pictures and delay its coverage by 18 hours has led to lower viewing figures than expected.
All-important and wise with it.
Seriously, it sounds like the IOC intends to suppress fair use of Olympic clips in reviews. They may have the right to exclude unauthorised cameras from their sites, but they can't rewrite the law. Or perhaps Harry Peart was glossing rather heavily over the legal situation.

Coke is an official sponsor of the Syndey 2000 games. If people are walking into the stadium with Pepsi products (or anything else) they will likely get it taken away. Lots of places don't let you bring food and beverage inside. If they sell coke, so what?

television coverage of the olympics is outmoded. use the internet more often. olympics.com

Actually, the U.S. Olympic committee, the national branch of the International Olympic Committee, which will be enforcing this on U.S. athletes, is not a govermental actor. (See San Francisco Arts & Athletics v. U.S.O.C., 483 U.S. 522 (1987)) Thus, the First Amendment does not apply to the U.S.O.C. (See an excellent article by Prof. Eugene Volokh of UCLA Law School. So, unfortunately we're stuck with the clap-trap the Olympic committee wants to feed us. Personally, I'll boycott the "official everything" of the Olympics, and watch for write-ups after the fact from either observers (because the audience are not restricted from writing) or the athletes after the fact. Thalia

Last week ZDNet Australia ran a story noting complaints from the sight impaired community that the official site for the Games www.olympics.com failed to provide a significant amount of information formatted in ways that can be read by text only (and therefor text-to-speech enabled) browsers. Examples of non-text friendly data include "the sport index, which provides event schedule information for 36 Olympic sports" and the results of competitions, "Something which [a representative for the site] claims will cost AU$4 million and take 368 days to do," according to one of the complainants.

This also means that the site is not meeting guidelines laid out by the WWW Consortium.

The combination of not providing a site meeting the needs of all users, and then censoring what others can report from the Games, means a total blackout of Internet information for these users.

The Olympics this year are the Summer games which are being held in Sydney Australia. IBM are however also the official provider of internet solutions to them. The next Winter games are in SaltLake City Utah USA but not until 2002.