Slashdot Mirror
IOC To Olympic Athletes: Online Diaries Verboten
joshstaiger writes: "An article was posted here on Slashdot a while back about the International Olympic Committee's banning of many forms of Internet broadcast of the upcoming Olympic Games. Now they are going even further, forbidding athletes to keep online journals of their experiences during the games under the reasoning that the athlete would be acting as a journalist (and therefore outside the IOC's nice little ring of corporate sponsors and media giants). Check this article from thestandard.com:
IOC Bans Athletes From Net Storytelling." Also, note that athletes may not wear "branded clothing of unauthorized sponsors when receiving medals." Don'tcha love that true spirit of amateurism and admirable, personal ambition?
Actually, I think they fear loss of control in all its forms. The internet is a proven way to lose control.
Control == best chance for long term profits. Everybody wants to control their destiny. They just want to control yours too if it'll profit them.
But in the end, control results in exclusive news deals rather than letting the best journalists get the money. It results in dictating what time the news is given out rather than the money going to the fastest news organization.
Yes they are.
Read about it here
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
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Nicotine free Amish .sig.
One would expect that athletes are not treated as diplomats, and thus must honour the local laws of the country they are in. Being in Sydney, this means they are not only denied the right to free speech they may normally enjoy in the US of A, but they'll also be subject to the swathe of recent draconian legislation passed by our government.
I recommend a combination of boycott and civil disobedience. The IOC (and others) can't censor international websites entirely, and I for one am very glad to be out of Sydney for the Olympics.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're NOT after you.
2) Car racing can also turn into a technology race or a race of who has the most money to put into hardware. But car racing has managed to keep the cars pretty even so they can compete mainly on driver skill.
Even the word scam doesn't do these people justice. Lets hope these two do some jail time.
Lots more info at Olympicssuck.com
The funny thing these things will never go away as long as we have Joe and Mary Blow from any country getting patroitic that so-and-so lost by a fraction of a second and fall into obscurity because he/she was beated by someone else from a different country by that fraction of a second and now will be on every McDonalds cup for the next six months.
I used to be an amateur ski racer; I even know a few kids who made it to the top and are now on the US Ski and Snowboard teams. What's unfortunate is that the IOC has let soft money and greed cause them to ignore the simple fact that without sponsors, some of these athletes wouldn't even have the equipment they need to compete. Runners may not have the money to buy running shoes, and the IOC is now telling them "sure, you can get your shoes for free, but if they're not from [our sponsors] then you better accept your medal barefoot." Most amateur athletes got put through athletic academies on full scholarship and will get the same when/if they go to college, simply because 1) they're too poor to begin with, or 2) if they spent their time working, then they wouldn't be spending it training.
I just hope the IOC doesn't start banning athletes from wearing branded equipment while competing. If a skier couldn't pop his ski off and hold it up for the cameras after his run, I think we'd start seeing lawsuits being filed by ski manufacturers against the IOC.
Intercarve Networks, LLC
The International Olympic Committe is nothing more than a crime syndicate under the guise of a non-profit organization. They take bribes during the city selection process, they have fixed events, they've co-opted the word Olympic and bully anyone who has a legitimate use of that name. They bend over for powerful nations like China when they force the democratic Republic of China, better known as Taiwan, to play as "Chinese Taipei" and under a generic Olympic flag.
The Olympics have very little to do with athletics or international goodwill. That's how it is sold, but of course, it is all about selling things, isn't it? It's about sponsership, marketing, and product placement. It's about political favors, one-upsmanship, and propoganda. Do yourself a favor and have nothing to do with this scam.
I am shocked the US Olympic Committee agreed to this. This is a better reason to boycott the Olympics than many of the other reasons people give. Denying athletes basic fundamental rights is sickening. So much for freedom of speech. Even if it isn't a universal concept, each American athlete should protest in his/her own fashion.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
Personally, I'de love to see an american gold metal winner listening to the national anthem, with a tear in her eye, rip off her shirt and reveal a sports bra with MICROSOFT SUCKS across each tit.
Would the world see it? I mean, they can paste logos onto the athletes in real time and the average viewer would never know the differance. So even IF the individual wanted to make a side deal to jump out of his sweat pants to reveal a jock strap with "slashdot" on his ass, I doubt the message would reach the masses.
Takeing this thought to it's extreeme, Why not ask the athletes to except their metals wearing a color neutral green suit so that each individual television market can digitally paint on their own local sponsors, thus returning "power to the people"?
People who don't have many people watching them can sell time to "1-900weare18" and "Your local Johnson Ford/Mitsubishi" and the people who win big in prime time can sell to coke and nike. Winning althletes could sell adds from their host country directly and pay a small "pasteing fee" to the network for putting it there.
The Olympics continue to get worse and worse. There was a time when Olympic athletes had to be amateurs...these days professional athletes are permitted to compete in the games; while one may argue there's nothing wrong with that, it's a reflection of how the Olympic games have changed from being an athletic event where athletes competed to see who was the best...these days the Olympics is all about who can make the most money.
Olympics Suck Website - Learn the Truth!
Are there still people who think that the Olympics have anything to do with amateur competition and brotherly rivalry among fellow humans? Raise your hands? You do? Moron.
Could someone explain to me exactly why the Olympics should only be open to amateurs? This seems totally stupid to me. To me, the olympics are about the best athletes in the world, competing. Period. Why should we not allow the best athletes to compete just because they happen to make money doing what they do?
As an aside, you do know the real reason that the Olympics were originally open only to amateurs, right? It was done to keep the poor riff-raff out of the games, and keep it reserved only for "gentleman". Only someone with enough money to train without needing a job was able to devote the time necessary.
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Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Yes... but free speech is not an international convention. It's a right guaranteed under the US Constitution, and I imagine some other countries have similar rights for their citizens, but the 'I' in IOC stands for 'International', meaning that the US Constitution (and the others) don't apply.
yeah, but professional athletes have better skillz. you're trying to keep people out just because they've got skillz. who wants the olympics to sux0r? I like the olympics almost as much as i like pepsi... mmmm... pepsi.
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Well I was going to say that now I was going to boycott the olympics and not watch it on television, but I already don't watch television so nothing is really changing.
. In the NCAA, athletes aren't allowed to accept anything more than a scholarship and some equipment.
Awww, tough shit. All they get is a free ride, free room and board for 5 years of college? They should be grateful... half of them would be out working anyway since they wouldn't be in college in the first place otherwise....
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
When Baron Pierre de Coubertin "reinvented" the Olympic Games in 1896, amateurism was one of his dearest principles, and he ruled that professional athletes would not be permitted. I don't remember when that rule was suppressed, but it seems like a looong time ago.
On the other hand, Coubertin's ideas were sometimes very dubious, if not outright fascist (pardon the anachronism) so one should not be too eager to rant about the (g?)Olden Days.
hang on.. doesn't this warrant a violation of free speech?
Commercialism has taken something that was supposed to unite many countries and turned it into something ugly fast.
I disagree. Commercial interest in the games is a healthy and crucial source of support. The problem lies with the incometence, shortsightedeness, and corruption of the IOC. It's up to the IOC to uphold the reputation of the games, support new technologies, provide complete, timely, multi-faceted methods of event coverage and reporting, and strike a balance between commercial interests and propriety. The Salt Lake City fiasco, the persecution of websites with domain names containing forms of the word Olympic, the banning of non-Sponsor Internet broadcasting, the manipulation of event broadcast times to capture peak time slots, and now the muzzling of the Athletes themselves are all proof that the IOC, as it's now structured, is incapable of providing proper direction of the games.
Another part of the problem: other than the Salt Lake City affair, how much of this sort of thing makes the evening news? News outlets need to let citizens know about the IOC's many bad habits.
The back of the medals for Sydney 2000 were originally planned to have a depiction of the Sydney Opera House. I imagine (though don't know) that they're a sponsor of the 2000 Games.
This was nixed, in favor of a more historically significant and less sponsor-oriented back image: the Roman Coliseum.
Of course, the Roman Coliseum was where Christians were put to entertaining death, not where the Olympic tradition started some hundreds of miles away.
[
Or maybe you would like a Japanese athlete with "Whale - nutritious AND tasty!" Or perhaps a North Korean athlete with "Nuke an imperialist today!" A Rwandan athlete with "Hutus take it up the ass"?. While I think the IOC have a lot to answer for, this restriction is necessary to avoid turning the Olympics into any more of a political bunfight than it already is.
It's quite a significant political issue in Australia at the moment, because Australia's only realistic chance for a track gold medal is Aboriginal, and will possibly wish to carry the Aboriginal flag as well as the Australian flag on her victory lap if she wins. While it will be a terrible shame if she is prevented from doing so, or suffers consequences if she does, to be fair on the IOC, how is it supposed to decide what political statements are acceptable, and which aren't?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
at least we know weed isn't a performance enhancing drug.
the whole olympics deal is just commercial schlock. Perhaps once it was about sports and sheer athleticism, but it hasn't been for a long time. Oh well, a sign of the times i think, as i sip from my gatorade thirst quencher with my michael jordan nike's on, and a big fucking swoosh on my chest. - oh well. at least i still have my black adidas warm-up pants.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
It reminds me of so many bands in the music industry who sign any record deal that comes along. Many of these agreements give full control over the music to the record company, and that's what's going on with IOC.
I would imagine that most athletes would willingly give up their right to update the journal at BonnieBlair.com while competing in order to achieve international fame and glory for years to come.
I'm not surprised they are keeping them offline, I came across this the other day, who knows what else they get up.
SPORTING CHANCE
GUT REACTIONS: Understanding Symptoms of the Digestive Tract by W. G.
Thompson, Plenum Publishing, pp 337, £1725/$2295
Did you know that in preparation for the 1976 Olympics, German swimmers
suffered the indignity of having 18 litres of air pumped into their colons
to improve buoyancy? Thompson says: "It apparently helped crawl and
backstroke specialists, but a breaststroker complained that the gas-filled
gut caused his feet to stick out of the water. Perhaps sports authorities
will need to test athletes for flatus, as well as steroids."
(13 January 1990
This is just a sample of what can found at.
http://www.nsplus.com/weird/bizarre2.html
It's called an elephant's trunk whereas it is in fact, an elephant's nose, a nose by any other name would smell as sweet
Let's face it, no event of this magnitude can be deployed without huge-ass amounts of money. And to get that huge-ass amount, you need the whole marketing and publicity machine. As a matter of fact, the only reason why the whole spirit of competition remains is that it's the main selling point of the marketed product.
Why do you think athletes still make pitful salaries? It's part of the Olympic image that smalltown athletes would make a pitful salary and compete in the Olympics anyway. It's good for the sales.
The athletes and sports organizations don't run the show. Corporate sponsors do, and they're the ringmasters. To think otherwise is crass idealism. So get over it already... It may not be cool, but it's normal.
The networks should get better journalists... ones that know how to find information on the web so their networks can be the first with the information on TV. So what if some obscure website has the piece... the journalist should take that (give credit) and report it if they find it 'newsworthy'. And then people who want more then just what the major TV networks feel is 'newsworthy' can read the websites.
I know the IOC is a corrupt board that imposes some pretty bad rules here and there -- especially those that make the Olympics look so commercialized -- but let's not let that ruin the experience.
I've had the opportunity to talk with a fair number of olympic hopefuls through my rowing and contacts in swimming, and the amount of personal sacrifice these guys have to go through is amazing. Let's face it, unless you're in a major sport (football, basketball, hockey, etc) then you will NOT make any money in sports. When was the last time you heard about a rower making it big? Yet, the time required to train for the olympic level, the money required to pay for coaches, leading edge equipment, and just basic life functions is high among all sports and becomes a real financial strain for families. It doesn't matter where the athlete came from -- competing at the international level is expensive and requires endorsements and a lot of hard work.
I still believe it's possible to look past the commercialism and see what's really there, a large number of athletes busting their ass so they can show that they are indeed the best in the world. Some of the technological things may be a little questionable (body suits in swimming, etc) but if you ban technology, you look technophobic, let it in and you slight the countries that don't have money for their athletes. The IOC just can't win in the public eye.
I will be watching the Olympics with great interest to see some outcomes of these questions. But I also think the athletes deserve it. If we didn't watch, then there would be no Olympics. I'll also be choosing some stores over others based on who supported the athletes. When stores like Home Depot pay fulltime wages to parttime Olympic hopefuls so they can compete, I think it's worth the few extra cents to help them out.
Say what you want about the commercialism of the Games and the corruption or short sightedness of the IOC, but let's not ignore the real reason the games exist. It's still there, you just have to focus on the goal.
My $0.02 -
--Oarsman
Go USA!
They pass these fascist rules and enforce them...
and the teams don't walk out, and the people calling the shots get rewarded, and are even encouraged to become more strict and greedy.
If you ask me, the athletes are getting what they deserve.
It would only take a couple of major events being blacked out to destroy the credibility of the Olympics forever.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Check the history of how Amateur athletics became so popular in the International Arena.
It started in England in the 19th century when the dilettante landed classes wanted to have athletic competitions and not have to compete in feats of strength against laborers.
Being aware of such competitions only since the 60's, I can't remember a time when International "Amateur" athletics was a sham because the Soviets and other totalitarian regimes had their full-time "Amateurs" who lived better than 99% of the general populace in those countries.
-Jordan Henderson
So much for the olympics as a great event to pit man against man (and woman against woman) in different physical events.
It's now about countries, politics, technology, and now, nothing but money.
I thought the Olympics were about amateurs (some of 'em) doing their best in front of thr world, about striving for the ultimatre glory.
Actually the Olympics (both the original and the restart around the time of the World Wars) are a way for nations to show off the warrior skills of their citizens, for prestige and to intimidate potential opponents.
Consider events such as "biathlon": Cross-country skiing while carrying a rifle and target shooting along the way. (This was used very effectively against the NAZIs by resistance movements.)
I guess the IOC is like the NCAA: Exploit those amateurs for $$$$. How sad.
True. But they've got to fund it SOMEHOW if they're going to do it at all. (And successful athletes get to make big bux from endorsements.)
Some things that bug me:
- The suppression of the shooting events in the news coverage (especially in the US - which takes most of the gold in these events).
- The move to eliminate politically incorrect competitions (like biathlon) so gun-unfriendly countries (like Japan) can avoid citizen unrest when their people see the athletes training and realize that people in other countries are freer than they are.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I'm not watching a minute of the olympics this year. If someone asks why, they're gonna get an earful.
- A.P.
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"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
It's all about selling the game to people. The IOC knows that; for this reason, they haven't banned "professional" athletes from competing because they put asses in seats and get others to buy "triplecast" subscriptions. (Remember the Triplecast? Hehehe!!)
- A.P., boycotting the Olympics.
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"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Yes, I don't disagree that many athletes would sacrifice everything to be at the Games, but there are many people in smaller events who can't get big name advertisers to sponsor them. Like those who do the events which are just printed in newspapers the next day with just stats instead of a story, among others. These types of events really don't get smothered by the high-money sponsors.
Then there's the thought of competing sponsors. Maybe Coca-Cola gains exclusive rights to be the only drink sponsor. Then Pepsi wants to support say one of our pole-vaulters. Well, Pepsi and that pole-vaulter are suddenly out of luck at the Games. All because of commercialism restrictions. It could also be that Kraft can't be allowed to sponsor the games because they're owned by Phillip Morris, and PM is not allowed to sponsor the games due to their cigarette brands. Who knows where this will all end?
My thought is, if you're going to allow sponsors, allow them all or none. Just because they're not approved, means that there's a sense of elitism in the Games, and those who need those sponsorships are stuck without funds they deserve. The sponsors have plenty of money and don't lose much by not sponsoring, and the Games already get money from the other sponsors and merchandising. Let's think about the little guys for a change, eh? They're representing our countries, NOT a specific list of corporations.
Dragon Magic
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
Now look at it. We have media interests paying upwards of a billion to get the rights to broadcast and report on the event. The corrupt IOC seems to just fsck everyone over, using the draw of participating in a world class event to silence and abuse the basic human rights of the contenders.
A friend of mine, Dave Millar, is likely to be cycling in the Olympics, however he also writes a column in a cycling magazine which is essentially a diary of his experiences and thoughts as a professional cyclist. As such he IS both a sportsman AND a journalist, and the IOC is effectively barring him from another professional activity.
All I can say is screw the olympics, I don't have a TV to watch it on anyway, I think it is about time some international legal juristiction be devised under which the IOC and other international events must operate, simply to tell them to fsck off when they get too big for there boots.
Well, although sports has virtually nothing to do with my life...
I'm glad the Olympic games are going to resume their tradition of stupid, communist restrictions on their athletes in the name of... well, who knows? For a while, I thought that they might actually be trying to operate rationally. I can't understand why they are doing this, except out of that twisted restrictive stubbornness that only entrenched bureaucrats are capable of.
These are obviously the same people who ran the Campus Printing Center in the Good Old Days.
Too much commercialization and the inevitable and eventual use of genetic therapy to say put cheeta muscles in humans or what not so they can run faster is going to result in the ultimate demise of the olympics which is already a freak show because all it does is exploit genetic advantages existing people already have. There is also no way to test for genetic alterations and if there is there will be ways around them, which only means that these olympiads will just be made of more and more different parts of different animals and such on the inside to improve performance in every aspect of their particular sport but still resemble humans so that they can trick the testing. Inevitably every sports game turns into a technology race.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel