IOC Clamps Down on Athlete Web Diaries

RSevrinsky writes "According to this article in the NYTimes, the non-profit IOC is scared stiff of losing its place as sole mouthpiece for the Games (which helped it get $705M from NBC for the TV rights). Now, even the athletes don't have the right to describe their own experiences for the outside world -- only Bob Costas can. " The IOC has never exactly been "nice" (actually, I would describe them more accurately as "Evil") but this is pretty dang stupid.

Comments

Advert Less Events

[SubtleNuance]

one giant fucking commercial financed by telecommunications companies and sportswear. It's pathetic and it makes me sick.

I must give the Aussies credit. Next time you are watching an Olympic event - have a look around the stadium. You'll see nary a single advert. I noticed this straight off, and make comment to some of my companions. We actually were unable to see a ad at the sporting venues. Everything is simply covered very tasteful "Sydney 2000" white text on a pale blue (fuscia?) background. Now, I know someone will say: "No way man, look at 'yadda yadda yadda'", but I was unable to locate one. Now, try to recall the games in Atlanta, remember that? The whole place looked like a billboard.

Thank you Australia. You have done a terrific job of making the sporting events/venues 'advert-free'. Im very impressed.

Re:Advert Less Events

[Robert S Gormley]

I agree. As an Australian, actually being here... there's a WORLD of difference between the Olympics 'as they happen', versus the Olympics, 'exclusively presented to you via NBC'.

Though Channel Seven's coverage here has left a lot to be desired too. (This is their free to air coverage, which seems more aimed at frustrating people into subscribing to C7 - two cable channels of coverage, owned by same company).

what?

[AgentGray]

If the IOC is non-profit, what are they going to do with $705 million?

Costas rocks (read his book). However, can NBC botch things up anymore? Whatever happened with their "neutral" interview with the shot putter that is not competing but was tested positive for steroids. Why? Because he is married to Marion Jones (apologies if the name is misspelled). They have to find some dirt somewhere.

I thought it was pretty cool to hear that when NBC got there they didn't find him, but they found a press release.

Just dont...

[Znork]

... let them stage their spectacle in your hometown. Throwing rotten tomatoes at the corrupt IOC officials or just staging a few anti olympics demonstrations when the local greaseboys try to get them to your town will usually do it.

The bill in new sports arenas, police invasion and associated costs usually makes the Olymics a lot more expensive than any local tourism or sales can make up for (depending which for of creative accounting you use, of course)... so the taxpayers end up paying a load to host that corrupt spectacle of drugged up degenerates anyway.

Who "owns" the news

[64.28.67.48]

From the article:
Earlier this year, Nascar, the stock-car racing league, backed off an attempt to make reporters agree that Nascar was sole owner of "images, sounds and data arising from and during any Nascar event" -- including the racing times and scoring information.

"They were saying, `If it happens during the event, we own the intellectual property rights to it,' " said Michael Persinger, the sports editor of The Charlotte Observer in North Carolina, the epicenter of the Nascar universe. "You can't own the news."

If the IOC is able to squash anyone broadcasting "their" information, what's to stop a political candidate from demanding that anything happening during one of his rallies (let's say he calls someone a major-league %$#@%$) cannot be reported by anyone but those whom he selects. After all, "any use of the term 'major-league %$#@%$' is the sole property of candidate --------"

-------------

Re:it most certainly is

[Ndog]

What? Don't you have freedom of religion? Yeah you do, and I don't think this employer would be in business after the lawsuit. Why is this any different?

This is different because it has nothing to do with religion. They are treating every athlete in the same way. Every athlete, and probably coaches and other participants, has to sign this agreement. You are adding things to this argument that don't belong there. Also, since it is the International Olympic Committee, why do they have to go by U.S. law? Everybody seems to assume, just because there are U.S. athletes the IOC has to follow U.S. law. That is not the case.

The point is you cannot make exercise of rights the deciding factor in an unrelated situation. It's wrong.

Being wrong isn't always illegal. I think you're confusing two different types of wrong. You say they are restricting free speech, which is wrong. Which wrong is it? Morally wrong? Most would say yes. Legally wrong? That would be for the courts to decide, but if the contract is written properly, this type of thing could hold up.

Spooon!

WHOOPS Re:Who "owns" the news

[64.28.67.48]

Sorry, that last paragraph is not part of the article (obvious to anyone who actually read it) - I hit the submit button when I meant preview...

-------------

Re:They should just boycott the IOC back.

[denshi]

Clamming up won't increase your market value.

I suppose that those motivated solely by greed (is there really such an animal?) have no interest in speech. But I wonder: an athlete spends many years training, often living on a subsistence income (at least before the medal roll in), begs and pleads for sponsors, knows that the most minor of injuries will destroy EVERYTHING; and they're in this for the money? Why didn't they go for the MBA track in school? Either they need a few accounting classes; (or maybe you do).

2. The sheer love of performing, if only for a brief moment, at the peak of human capacity. Geeks on /. ought to be able to relate to this one. Gold medal or not, after dedicating years of your life to a sport, why should you care about possible restraints on your reporting on it during the competition? That's not nearly big enough to bother risking your future eligibility over.

I suppose cowardice is a valid reason for some.
Keep those heads down! No risk!

language: they've already won

[q000921]

By using language like "the I.O.C.'s intellectual property rights", people are already conceding everything to the I.O.C. How could anybody oppose giving other people their property rights?

Of course, the term "intellectual property rights" is a cynical manipulation of language. Why should anybody have "property rights" to other people's free speech?

As for the Olympic "movement" itself, I hope athletes and viewer will stop deluding themselves about it. The Olympics is all about money. International understanding and sports are not a part of it. If you want to further the so-called "Olympic ideals", participate in sports yourself and travel yourself. There are lots of fun sports events around the world that are not as commercialized.

(Similar comments apply to the term "intellectual property rights" for trademarks, patents, and copyrights. All of those are limited licenses granted by the government, not intrinsic unlimited rights to property.)

Personal Freedom, not Business

[Gefiltefish]

It seems that the issue here is not so much who "owns" the olympics, or who holds rights to report on them. Instead, this seems to be more of an issue of personal freedom. Who "owns" a persons experience and their rights to talk about it. Outside of security-related issues, attempts to restrain a person from talking about their experience of a clearly public event is absurd.

Re:IP

[nagora]

I know you're a troll, but I'm bored. /. has been minimizing the role of Inetlectual Property in business and in open source.

IP is the cornerstone of the GPL, in the form of copyright which it is based on. The abuse of IP is a real issue, probably too complex for you.

But, it is their right to control the flow of media from the game

Why? From what ethical basis does this right derive? What has media control to do with the organisation's legitimate role of organising the events? How do you, oh fuckwit, know that by posting your comment you are not in breach of some other imaginary "right" that the IOC has decided to claim?

It makes a copy of copyrighted material.

If you knew anything, shit for brains, you would know that it plays DVDs. It is of no more use for making a copy than a record player is for making tapes of records. But then, Trollus maximus, you knew that.

(i.e. only possibly going through virtual memory)

Ah, so you, the great arbiter, has decided that when your system copies the data to the HD as part of the playing process it's okay, but when DeCSS does it it's bad. Great logic, or at least as good as the rest of your drivel.

one must respect others IP rights by not taking illegal actions because one thinks it's okay.

So it's okay to depend on rights, but it's not okay to complain if anyone tries to take those rights away? Welcome to Nazi America.

Just go away.

TWW

American Values?

[SubtleNuance]

Especially countries that don't prize free speech the way the US does.

HEheheheheheh - thats damned funny. You dont seem to understand;

This -IS- the way the US prizes free speech*

This 'policy' is a result of the US involvement (strong-arming) the Olympic Experience. If the speech is contrary to corporate profits, its not allowed. See DeCSS court rulings for an example, or the DMCA, or the action against Napster: these are American 'values'. Hheheheh, thats the funniest post on /. all day.

* I will concede that this may not mean the 'citizens' of America, but it surely is the policy of their government and lawmakers...why is this the case?

Wake up America, do the citizens of the planet (yourself included) a favour, tell your friends/relatives/neighbours to:

Re:what's your point?

[FigWig]

I know you're a troll, but you can't own an event. You can own a particular description of an event, but you can't restrict other people from recounting their experiences. At least not the last time I read copyright law. Unfortunately the NFL, IOC, and your grandma are trying to change this.

This only take away from the Olympics

[jjr]

This takes away from the Olympics it takes away the human factor. Alot of people would love to read the day to day thoughts of athletes what are they going through. People will follow the events even more so when the human element is added.

Re:Not the only thing

[Fishstick]

troll, you are full of it (or dyslexic)

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?

Re:They should just boycott the IOC back.

[jms]

um, perhaps an amateur athlete; one without a corporate sponsor, if there are any left anymore.

Re: Free speech in the US

[namespan]

Ouch. Point taken. We've lost a lot of ground here.

Originally, I was thinking of China or Cuba or Chile or something like that... a country where even free speech rhetoric doesn't fly well. Free speech rights are being eroded in the US, and probably actually prizd by a small percentage of citizens. But free speech rhetoric still plays fairly well here....

And I do realize there are probably places that prize free speech as or more highly than the US.

Re:Bah.. screw mass commercialism

[Denial of Service]

Give me some hard-hitting fast-moving hockey!

Excellent! I don't even have to insult this jackass, since he's done it to himself with this last sentence. He's a hockey fan... nuff said.

Re:A related rant...

[sconeu]

And how about NBC affiliate stations and the Today Show's cutsie:

"We're going to give you the results of the events, but we know you want to help our ratings by not finding out stuff until 24 hours after the fact, so leave the room while we tell you what happened. Then you can watch our commercial filled non-coverage in prime time, so we don't lose so much money!"

Ok, so they don't use those exact words, but you know what I mean...

Duuuuh....

[Stoutlimb]

Corporations are evil, because they restrict my freedom of association! If I spend my entire day associating freely at the water cooler, I won't get paid! Waaaaaah!

Corporations are EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL!

Re:A related rant...

[lizrd]

The thing is that they basically tried this 4 years ago or was it 8. I don't remember. They had 3 pay per view style channels that just showed live events all day. Problem is that nobody bought it and they lost tons of money. Therefore it ain't happening this summer.
________________
They're - They are
Their - Belonging to them

I feel their pain

[unsung]

I don't support the IOC, but I think that I can sort of understand where they're coming from. In 1996, Fuji Film sponsored the Olympic Track and Field trials. They put up giant billboards all over Atlanta with a picture of Dan Jansen. The billboards stayed up through the Olympics. Kodak, on the other hand, sponsored the Olympics not trials) , and spent millions upon millions more than Fuji Film.

The web really opens up these types of tactics. Think of what happens if one Linux distributor (say, VA Linux) sponsors the Olympics for millions, then Microsoft jumps in and signs all the athletes for their web journals at pennies to the dollar. I agree, it's a shame this has to happen.

Re:I feel their pain

[unsung]

Oh, one other thing. I seriously doubt that the IOC will ban online journals forever. Likely, they will find an Official sponsor for the journals come the next Olympics... sort of like the NBA.com website.

How did it ever start?

[silicon_synapse]

How do you get the "rights" to report on something? I've heard about it plenty of times, but where did it start? Where's the legal basis? Who decides who owns and can sell the rights to start with? It all seems pretty rediculous to me, but that's no surprise.

Re:How did it ever start?

[Fishstick]

Well, guess in this case she was sending e-mail to her local paper which was then printed in the local edition and probably posted on their web page.

Think the issue is not allowing any exceptions. You are right, the athletes probably agree not to publish journals or accounts or anything as a condition for participation in the games.

I'm sure also that the last thing the IOC want's to see is some athlete slamming the Judges, the hosting city, the IOC or the games themselves during the actual Olympics. They can't very well control what you say after the games are over and you go home, but they obviously have an interest in controlling the distribution of what is said during the games (not that I think it's right).

So in this case it was some small-hometown athelete publishing her story to those most interested, those in her home town. Pretty harmless, but if they were to allow it, seems like a precedent is set that opens up headaches when athletes start selling their during-games accounts to national and inter-national media outlets. Don't want those uppity athletes to get too much power, afterall. Just run and jump and swim and let everyone think everything is peace and love and pure athletic competition.

Re:How did it ever start?

[Zordak]

>>but it seems the individual members profit as much as they can.

Isn't it funny how everybody cries scandal when a city bribes Olympic officials to get The Games (a la Salt Lake City), but since the city that got The Games (read $$$ flow) is indeed the city that bribed the IOC folks, it would appear that bribery is in fact a prerequisite to getting The Games. In short, I would dare say that The Olympics (R)(C)(tm) and the IOC (R)(C)(tm) are about more than just giving amateur athletes a "moment to shine"(R)(C)(tm).

Do not teach Confucius to write Characters

Re:How did it ever start?

[.sig]

Well, it seems like the IOC is saying, "If you want to play our games, you have to go through us to talk to the public." Utter BS, but I didn't make the rules.
I'd really love to tear into them, but they are non-profit, and they're just trying to hold onto their 'funding.' It's just a shame that they couldn't think of a bettter way to handle it.

Re:How did it ever start?

[ebh]

IANAL, but I suspect it's done by writing contracts in each country. In the case of the IOC, it's probably a precondition of your country being recognized by the IOC that you agree to let the IOC control broadcast rights, protect its trademarks, etc.

So here's the real question: Are we talking about something as innocent as a "What I Did on My Summer Vacation" page, or does the IOC have a legitimate claim to what the athletes "produce" at the Games just as my employer owns what I produce on the job? After all, I can't say, "On my summer vacation, I wrote the following proprietary code..."

Re:How did it ever start?

[Xenix]

curve it around....

Re:How did it ever start?

[slickwillie]

but they are non-profit

The IOC may be non-profit (or more correctly, not-for-profit (but we can't help it if we actually do make one)), but it seems the individual members profit as much as they can.

Re:How did it ever start?

[Verteiron]

How do you get the "rights" to report on something?

Simple.. just hit the US Patent office and apply for a patent on reporting the Olympics.

Re:"If"

[aka_daedalus]

Analogies on Slashdot are stupid. ("Let's take an example..." "Your analogy is flawed! It really should be...") But I couldn't avoid this one.

Let's use a baseball game as an example. As we all know, "rebroadcast without the express written permission of Major League Baseball" is not allowed. But if I attended the game, can I make a webpage that gives a general outline of the game. Sure! I'm not "rebroadcasting" anything--I'm reporting (in my own words) on an event. You can run an event but you can't own the rights to tell people about it.

You can also report on the Olympics, can'tcha? The issue (did you read the article) is that the athletes themselves can't publish diaries. In the same way, the MLB players are likewise restricted (under contract) in what they can say/do in light of the League's best interests -- or face fines. Or at least it's this way for the NBA.

Re:Didn't we already talk about this?

[Cebert]

I hate when this happens too, but when it's something that I missed the first time around (like in this case), I always feel grateful. :)

Didn't we already talk about this?

[DrEldarion]

Yes, we did.

-- Dr. Eldarion --

Re:"If"

[Veteran]

Contracts which people have no choice but to sign are not valid. The athletes don't get to negotiate any of the clauses - they are dictated by the IOC. The only choice they get is "do things our way or don't do them". There is a word for that: it is 'coercion'.

I realize that there are people in the world who's sense of justice is so poor that they think that a two year old child against Mike Tyson - or a grown man barehanded against a bull elephant is a fair fight; but the rest of us can see that they are not. Are you one of those blind to justice people? If you are, I suggest that you try opening your eyes; just because you can get a person's signature on a piece of paper doesn't mean what you are doing is right.

Contracts and other legalisms are just words written on pieces of paper - there is no possibility that those words are more important than the people who create them; anyone who thinks that they are is either very evil, or seriously mentally ill. People are alive and matter - legalisms are dead ink on paper. Writings matter only when what they say reaches the level of the profound.

A contract designed to screw somebody hardly qualifies as profundity.

wtf?

[B1ood]

as a potential olympic athlete, i'm outraged. i didn't skip out of training to spend all this time working on my GPL'd mysql/php blog backend for nothing did i?

B1ood

Who's life is it?

[SlashGeek]

Just one question: Where does the IOC get off with being able to tell the athletes that they cannot tell people about their own lives? That sounds about as absured as telling somebody they do not have rights over their own autobiographies. And the Olympics, of all events. Is nothing sacred any more?

Where does the money go?

[deefer]

AFAIK, the athletes themselves are sponsored by their nationss / corporate interests, so that's that taken care of.
People pay at the stadium, which rakes off a prfit from that, as well as drinks/food/tshirts etc... Besides which, the local economy is given a massive boost, the host country gets a whole load of foreign currency...
So, is the IOC a non profit, or what? Any conspiracists out there with an answer?

Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.

Re:Where does the money go?

[M@T]

Besides which, the local economy is given a massive boost, the host country gets a whole load of foreign currency...

Not likely... there is no immediate money in hosting the Olympic Games. The Australian taxpyer is currently footing the bill for the Sydney games, though I do believe Sydney WAS on target to be the first games to actually break even... but the failure of their tickets-for-the-rich scheme would have busted that idea.

The real benefit comes from the boost to tourism and increased international exposure over the next few years... thats where the return is - its certainly not at the gate.

Re:IP

[yugami]

If you knew anything, shit for brains, you would know that it plays DVDs

it does not PLAY DVD's, creates an unencrypted stream that a standard MPEG player can make use of.

Re:They might not even have to totally stop interv

[superdoo]

Especially countries that don't prize free speech the way the US does.

This is said tongue-in-cheek I hope.

Ok

[arothstein]

let's see.

Microsoft, evil
Napster, good
RIAA, evil
Theft of IP, good
USPTO, evil
DeCSS, good

oh, and

IOC, evil

Re:Ok

[jwilloug]

IOC, evil

Hard to call them anything else, really. The IOC is where overthrown third world tyrants go to die, and few have changed their colors. Bribery, drugs, nepotism, arbitrary rule enforcement, threatening of investigative journalists... It's difficult to find something they're not guilty of.

Re:Ok

[Cramer]

s/USPTO, evil/USPTO, stupid/

The Olympics are going down...

[FortKnox]

I haven't seen a single event yet, and don't plan on watching one. And I'm definately not alone.

Viewing the Olympics is at an all time low, and the IOC isn't helping at all. Making excrutiatingly restricted rights are gonna help the Olympics completely fail...

If they were smart, the IOC would open their restrictions instead of restrict, if they plan on staying afloat.


-- "Microsoft can never die! They make the best damn joysticks around!"

nbc/ioc = f#$@k'd olympics

[sykt]

'cause you know I really want to know what the experience was like for the tramatized little kid that fell off the trampoline at age 5 and then made a stunning recovery from his/her / their (doubles synchronized tramp.) coma to win gold at sydney... you want a fun olypics, then you are going to have to start from scratch and GPL the whole thing to get the money out of it, because as it is now the corrupt IOC (www.olympics.org) only has their financial interest in mind. not to mention the f#$@ing sports they have in these olympics! I must bring up the point that, recreational activities an olympic sport does not make. SPEED WALKING - give me a f@!#ing break (and they disqualified the gold medalist no less for taking a fast step or some bull) TRAMPOLINE - yea, who voted this one in disney? ANYTHING SYNCHRONIZED - oh please Notice that there are some sports that NBC won't even show you on regular TV...like BOXING, the only place to see it is CNBC on cable. It must be too disturbing of a sport for Americans to handle, kids might go out and start shooting up their school if they saw that :)! The next time they add sports they need to look to computers, code racing - yea baby! late, h.

Old news...

[Col. Klink (retired)]

I already knew about this because I actually read /.:

IOC To Olympic Athletes: Online Diaries Verboten

Re:Old news...

[Col. Klink (retired)]

> Sorry for posting what is obviously old news

Not your fault. That's why /. has editors.

> I am (like many /.ers) a weekday reader

So are the editors, it seems...

Re:Old news...

[Slashdot Rapper]

That's fascinating!!!

Do you think it runs on linux?

Re:Old news...

[RSevrinsky]

Sorry for posting what is obviously old news. I should point out that the post in question was on a Saturday, and I am (like many /.ers) a weekday reader.

- Richard

No Shit

[Weh]

When the Dutch crown prince became a member of the IOC it was seen as a controversial move. The parliament even had debates about whether he should be in it or not. All this because of the IOC's reputation for corruption.
I mean what kinda body is the IOC ? who controls them ? Are there any kind of regulations from within the organization itself ?
Oh yeah and did you hear about Samaranch asking the Indonesian government to release an IOC member who is currently in jail because of an investigation into corruption (not IOC related)charges. Samaranch didn't really think it was all that bad, and thought the games are more important. Just the fact that it entered his mind to ask the Indonesian government to release him baffles me... Of course he got laughed at by the Indonesian government....

IOC == International Organized Crime

Re:No Shit

[kwashiorkor]

All information re: IOC is fnord.

The Mgt.

-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with

boycott!

[quigonn]

usa and australia, pls boycott and give all your medals to Austrian athletes! I'd be happy with it.

Re: NBC losing money

[thogard]

NBC has agreed to pay $4 billion for exclusive coverage till 2008. Too bad their current ratings don't justify that expense. Face it, afternoon talk shows are getting higher ratings than the Olympics and they didn't cost billions of dollars.

The advertises know they aren't getting their moneys worth. I bet thigns are much different next time. I wonder if they will convince Seoul to run games at midnight so they run the games live.

Re:Yet another argument for socialism

[Greg@RageNet]

Yes, we all rather have our hospitals run like the DMV. "I don't care if you have a punctured lung and are drowning in your own blood. If you don't have an appointment you have to wait at the end of the line".

Right now you have choices. You can either be part of any number of health insurance plans and abide by their policies or you can go without insurance and therefore have the option to seek whichever treatment you would like and can afford. If you socialized medicine you have no choice but to have (and pay for through taxes) the one and only state-run healthcare system. If the government decides it's not cost efficient to treat desease XYZ and you happen to have desease XYZ too bad so sad.

-- Greg

Re:CBC Website and NBC's stupid coverage

[Christopher Whitt]

I wanted to post to an earlier story to say how glad I am to live in Canada and be able to watch 3 different Olympic networks on plain old basic cable (CBC, NBC, and TSN).

I just couldn't believe how annoying it was to watch the women's triathalon, taped on NBC with the stupid scripted commentary read by somebody who sounded like he just came from an audition for a daytime drama. What a relief to be able to switch 3 channels down the dial and see the men's triathalon live, with real sports commentators, really commenting on the sport being shown, live, in real-time.

It's like NBC is trying to make the Olympics into a made-for-tv miniseries. Ugh. I'm offended.

So add my voice to the chorus of "Hoorah for CBC".

Oh, and here is CBC's web coverage of the results from Sydney. While you're at it, also check out results from TSN, Canada's sports network.

How they are allowed to get the rights.

[bigsproket]

I was reading in Velonews a bicycle racing magazine about the problems occuring with the Olympic coverage. During major events like this the magazine usually acquires an athelete to have a diary availible daily on the web or in the dead-tree format. However they explained that this would not be allowed in the games.

The individual atheletes are required to sign a form which at about stipulation number 59 says that they cannot have any diaries for the puplic, or any other journalistic endeavour while the games are underway. They then continue with some quasi-righteous sounding drivel about how they are at the olympics to compete as an athlete and not to be a journalist! The IOC themselves are the ones that issue press passes and none where made availible to internet media types. Also no real time reporting is allowed in the US because of the sponsorship type deal with NBC/(any surprise?) MSNBC. So we have no real time reporting that is allowed because NBC has sole rights to the games here in the states. I think this is terrible because I would like to be able to watch the games live as they happen AND on tape. Not just on tape and then have them screaming at me about a possible metal win when i could have heard about this 15 hours earlier. Perhaps the worst part of this is that the rest of the world can watch the games LIVE! just not the US because of NBC's sole rights to the info. Europe watches it live so does Australia and the Orient.

I'm curious to know what is to stop somebody from taking a laptop to the games and doing some live reporting while they happen now that would be nice to crack NBC's nut the only problem is you need somebody sly or obscure or is it possible more powerful than NBC? To take on the possible legal onslaught after such an action.

This is really disgusting in the world we live in and the technology we have availible that the olympic coverage cannot be better and real time. I think it's very detremental to the games and just adds to my ever-jaded view of our world man it is disgusting so now the olympics aren't just te pure competetion and altheticism for it's own sake.

Even the olympics have to be sold and marketed now or it's just not worthwhile? Well I'm done with my rant now I hope I provided some useful information.

Mild OT Comment on IOC

[mog]

If the IOC scandals of the preceding years to this Olympics had not soured your mouth before now, this very well may.
I am a huge fan of a game called Legend of the Five Rings (L5R). It's of the same type as Magic: The Gathering (a CCG). On the back of the L5R cards, there are five rings, interjoined. The IOC presented Wizards of the Coast with an ultimatum threatening law suit if they did not change the backs.
Now, thanks to the IOC, the game is being almost killed. When the new edition comes out, everyone will be forced to either use card protectors with black backs, or strictly play with old or new cards.
The reason? Those five rings on the back look too much like the Olympic rings. Yes, those rings which were once, according to nostalgia, supposed to signify unity and peace, even in time of war. The IOC told Wizards that they had those rings copyrighted. Therefore, a wonderful game will probably die.
The IOC is a board of beurocratic asses that have no respect for what the Olympics once stood for.

Re:IP

[Azog]

When I heard about DeCSS, I thought it was a stupid case. Then I read a description of what the program does, and that is flat illegal, no matter what you say. It makes a copy of copyrighted material.

You're kidding, right?

You think that making a copy of copyrighted material is breaking the law? Well shoot, you'd better shut down your browser right now, or I'll sue your ass. These comments are copyright by me, and your browser just copied them.

Of course that's nonsense, because I implicitly gave you the rights to make a copy of this article and read it when I posted it. But when I buy a DVD, I implicitly (should?) have the right to make a copy of it and view it too. That's what deCSS does. So why should it be illegal?

Another example: DeCSS cannot be illegal just because it could be used to copy a DVD. If that was true, photocopiers would be illegal, because they could be used to copy books.

Enough of this nonsense.

The RIAA, the MPAA, the IOC, and other oppressive organizations are attempting to take away freedom of speech and fair-use rights. Copyright was originally limited, they are trying to make it unlimited through legal and technological means.

These organizations want to create a world where you could be charged for everything you see, hear, and experience - every time. A world where you own nothing and rent everything. An attitude like that tends to polarise people, and push them in the other direction. Despite that, I don't think Slashdot (in general) is becoming anti-IP, although some posters may be.

But most posters here have a greater respect and understanding for the limitations of copyright. I think the original version of the copyright act was, on balance, a good thing.

I think the only "anti-IP" on Slashdot is an "anti-expansion-of-IP". At least, that's the only anti-IP I have.


Torrey Hoffman (Azog)

Re:They should just boycott the IOC back.

[Quikah]

Bah. The only reason that this whole thing started out as amateur only was to keep out the lower class of peoples. Only the rich could afford to devote time to train enough to become competitive. There were MANY talented athletes who simply could not afford to spend their lives training, they do not deserve a chance to compete?

Todays system is much better. If you have talent you can get sponsorship and support to cultivate your talent. And that is how it should be. The talented should be able to compete, we should not have to make this a live or die decision for them just so we can get some sort of entertainment out of them.

If you have been watching the olympics they have occasionally shown some pretty cool stuff about third world countries bringing some athletes to the games in sports which their country has never competed in before. They did horribly, but they still competed, and they got a hell of a lot of cheers and applause for giving it their best. Under the original system these athletes would be forced to stay home since they cannot afford to compete. Screw that.

Lets take it another way. Say some poor kid is incredibly talented in science. We should let that kid go to waste in crummy inner city public schools I suppose? Or do we give him a scholarship to a university so that he can develop his talent?

Yet another argument for socialism

[gholt]

There are some things that just shouldn't be a business. There are some things that shouldn't be motivated by profit. I know, I know, it's un-american of me to say this, but I don't want my doctors being held hostage by insurance companies and I don't want the Olympics held hostage by Corperate America.
'nuff said.

Re:A related rant...

[gbsmith]

> I have a feeling that because of these olypmics
> however, you're not going to see another
> olypmics that doesn't occur within 10hrs of LA
> (eg limiting it to the Americas, Europe, Africa, > and Western Asia.)
>
Well, the favorite for the 2008 games is Beijing and Osaka is also making a strong bid so, yes we probably will see another like this. How NBC (or whoever decides to cough up the gazillion dollars for rights) decides to present is anyone's guess...

G B Smith

Re:The Olympics are Irrelevant anyway

[Danse]

Maybe people have finally woke up and realized that there's no point in watching endless hours of coverage of something that has absolutely no meaningful impact on their life...(notice the ratings for football are also down this year as well...)

I think there are 2 things that are causing the low ratings. Another reply to your post hit the first one, which is that people are more pressed for time these days. But that links quite nicely with my other point, which is that people want entertainment, which is something that NBC has simply failed miserably to provide. With less time available to us, we try to get the most bang for our umm.. time. The Olympics just aren't gonna satisfy that need. Especially the way NBC is running things.

Re:it most certainly is

[mindstrm]

The olympians are not in the USA. You will notice that 'Australia' is not part of 'The United States of America'. Hence, any consitutionally guaranteed 'rights' of Americans mean absolutely NOTHING in Australia.

I see the point you are trying to make, but it's wrong, and misguided.

The right to free speech means the government cannot impede your right to speak out. That is not happening here.

By your logic, a company making you sign a 'non-disclosure' agreement is also inhibiting your right to free spech, as your job will be terminated if you 'speak up'. Your employer is in no way impeding your rights.

These people signed a contract, and as such, are BOUND BY CONTRACT not to speak about the olympics.

Pay-per-view Olympics?

[Lurker187]

OK, I'm disgusted with the IOC, and I've had it in for NBC's sports coverage since the Atlanta games. (Don't get me started on their baseball coverage!)

That said, the more I think about it the more I like the idea of a broadband "menu" of the games, where you can choose a sport and call up the entire event. There could be alternate angles and audio tracks for different commentary (or none at all). In events that are not head-to head, like gymnastics or diving, you could skip to the next athelete's "chapter" if someone was already eliminated from contention, or you just wanted to see certain atheletes. (Yes, I'm thinking of a DVD's choices, but I'm trying not to turn this into an analogy.)

I would pay to have these kinds of alternatives to NBC's vomitus of commentary with small, partially digested chunks of actual sporting events floating in it. The flexibility would even allow for paying to see just one sport, a 3-sport package, unlimited use...

I know NBC and the IOC would HATE to let us decide what we can and cannot see, but the more discussion there is about alternative media, the more people will realize that there should be other choices.

Re:Not the only thing

[Danse]

Then the question is whether they let you bring in "official" products, but nothing else, or at least not any competitor's products.

Re:Decorpratization of Olympic Games

[unsung]

You mean like, having us give money to Pubic Television to air it?

Re:CBC Website

[Alkaiser]

Props to you for naming yourself after a (relatively) obscure cycling event.

I agree, usually, I have to bag on the Canadians, but they're a thorn in the side to big business this time, and seeing as how I think big business is just being a huge BASTARD right now, I have to actually...gulp...commend the Canadians...

I watch the Olympics for the competition. The Olympics aren't like a this huge f*cking 200+ country group hug, and that's what NBC is making it look like.

If I just want to know about personal adversity or overcoming hardships, I'll just talk to myself. What makes the athletes tales of toil any different than mine?

Nothing...except for the fact that they're in the Olympics...so, then SHOW THE F*CKING OLYMPICS!

You're wrong about the NBC coverage only showing the Americans...they show Non-Americans...because they don't want to look like dumbasses when they don't mention the winner of the event before they show it. They'll offer up some aside like, don't forget to watch lane 4, she's unheard of, but people think she might pull an upset. (Yeah, especially the people who know the results already because they're 15 hours ahead.) Like yesterday...they hadn't shown anything about Korea...all of a sudden there's a piece on them, and BAM! One of the South Korean gymnasts finishes with 2 gold medals! Oh my goodness, how clairvoyant of NBC! They really know their stuff.

Godwins Rule

[Stoutlimb]

I invoke Godwins rule!

So shut up!

Re:Remember the pre-Atlanta 'Olympic' hubub?

[Tycho]

Yeah I remember hearing about this. I also remember hearing that the IOC was forcing companies with "olympics" to change their names this time around too.

Re:it most certainly is

[Ndog]

You are confusing things. Your examples do not apply. Voting is a right given under the Constitution. Participating in the Olympics is not a right. If you want to participate, you have to follow their rules. It doesn't have to be right. They are allowed to require the athletes to sign a contract to participate.

I agree it's wrong, but that comparison is extreme and inaccurate. Even if, under U.S. law, the IOC can't do this because it is free speech, the threat of not competing or a lawsuit will hold athletes in check. Free speech is not a right in every country either.

Spooon!

Hmmm....

[wwphx]

So, if you selectively mind-wipe the people who saw the DeCSS code (myself included), would you have to mind-wipe the Copyleft folks who made my swell t-shirts? After all, the code was declared anathema, but the t-shirts were declared Freedom of Expression.

--

someones pocket

[ArchieBunker]

The pockets of the organizers and big bosses.

Re:CUZ U HAVE NO FUCKING LIFE

[GypC]

Jesus Mike, lighten up...

"Free your mind and your ass will follow"

Re:IP

[bnenning]

Then I read a description of what the program does, and that is flat illegal, no matter what you say. It makes a copy of copyrighted material.

Legality is a matter for the courts and that is still being decided. Regardless, it is not wrong, no matter what you or the courts say. It allows the owner of a DVD to make a copy for space-shifting purposes, a long-recognized application of fair use. It could also be used to pirate DVDs, just like a CD burner can be used to pirate software. The possibility of illegal use does not justify the criminalization of all use.

If it were to pipe an MPEG video player, not logically going to the hard drive (i.e. only possibly going through virtual memory) then it would not be illegal because it would not "copy" the movie!

It would still be copied to RAM, which would probably be sufficient for the MPAA weasels to try to ban it.

Given that it is IP rights that protect GPL'ed code, one must respect others IP rights by not taking illegal actions because one thinks it's okay.

No one has a duty to obey an unjust law. Arguably, one has a duty to break it. Martin Luther King, yada yada yada.

/. should be careful about trivializing IP or it may find itself at the butt end of a lawsuit.

/. allows a forum for posters to express their views. Any law of which that would be in violation needs to be swiftly challenged and disposed of.

Not to say that it is wrong to oppose oppresive laws and systems, but /. is becoming the "no IP" site.

The /. "official policy" (not that there is one) is not that all IP is bad, but that entities which attempt to abuse IP with bogus patents (Amazon, BT...), post-sale license "agreements" (CueCat, MS...), and purchased legislation (MPAA, RIAA...) should be stopped. (Voting Libertarian would be a good start.)

Re:IP

[rajulkabir2]

/. should be careful about trivializing IP or it may find itself at the butt end of a lawsuit Oh, come now. We've seen a lot of ridiculous things in recent years, but I think we're still some time away from the day when a noncorporeal legal concept successfully sues for defamation of character. Until then, trivialization remains a God-given right of one and all. As for DeCSS, you've been reading too much RIAA propaganda. Is trading copies of movies illegal? Sure, and it should be. But this is not the way to fight it. Running DeCSS is something that a person does in their own home with a DVD they have purchased. While it can in theory (though certainly not in practice, given reports to date) be the prelude to an illegal act, it in itself has no legitimate harmful effect on the IP owner, and it has plenty of perfectly legitimate uses, and should therefore not be illegal. Going after DeCSS is like going after someone who invents a better lumber milling process: Yes, the fruits of their invention could conceivably be used to produce counterfeit $20 bills, but the fact is that the criminal is the counterfeiter. To keep this on-topic: I'm surprised there haven't been any anonymous diaries on the web. Surely among all those thousands of athletes there must be one or two who feels that his/her inside-the-games perceptions are more interesting and valuable than the self-aggrandization of having his/her name in print.

Re:did the athletes agree?

[bluGill]

Including my own ...hometown newspaper

Of coruse any good reporter protects his sources, and will have no problem interviewing a bunch of anonymous athlites and then publishing. I worked for a newspaper (Not in a position where my poor english would matter) and we continiously pubbed it into reporters that it is better to go to prison then revieal your anonymous sources.

Re:CBC Website

[Giro d'Italia]

I highly recommend the Canadian coverage. Yes, it's live, which is a big plus if there are some events you are really into, or if you're just a fanatic (like my wife).

The real difference is the substance of the coverage. On NBC, you get Oprah/ER type bleeding heart stories about the athletes; interviews with families, coaches, teachers, etc. That's all well and good if you want to sit and get all teary eyed, but if you are actually interested in the sporting events, NBC is awful.

CBC covers the events, and you get fairly decent analysis of them. The commentators (especially track) really know their stuff and explain the nuances of unfamiliar sports quite well. There is the occasional backgrounder on an athlete, but the event itself is the focus.

The other great thing is that they are fairly neutral, at least vis a vis NBC. They'll interview a non-Canadian who wins an event, they'll discuss non-Canadian favourites. NBC is only interested in the American, and only if they have a chance of winning.

Hoorah for CBC. I hope that the US cable providers near the border keep them on their lineup.

Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy

[wwphx]

(paraphrased, the mind begins to go as you approach 40)

"I'd like to see a nude opera because when they hit those high notes I bet you'd really see it in their genitals."

--

Re:it most certainly is

[ChristTrekker]

Ah, but an NDA is directly applicable to the situation. (Information you leak might help the competition and harm your employer.) I was under the assumption that the Olympics was about sports primarily, and thus thought that the IOC should limit itself to the sporting considerations. Now that you've opened my eyes to the fact that it's really about corporate greed, I understand perfectly.

Call me an optimist, idealist, whatever. It's been a great discussion, though. Thanks.

Re:"If"

[wwphx]

"Contracts which people have no choice but to sign are not valid."

There is a difference between signing a contract under duress, which is invalid, and signing an Olympic contract. If you are pointing a gun at my head and I sign a contract saying I'll pay you $1M, it is not valid. But an Olympic athelete has a choice: they can sign the contract and go to Australia, or they can not sign the contract and not go. It is not duress, it is extreme coercion, but there is no threat if you fail to sign. You simply don't get to go and compete and represent your country. That is the only consequence.

It's a shitty choice of options, but no one is forcing them to sign the contract.

There have been reports of people who go to used car dealerships who have gotten locked in rooms until they promise to sign a contract to buy a car. That, also, is duress. It is also kidnapping (illegally restraining your freedom of movement). Which is why I carry a cell phone and legally carry a concealed firearm when going to car dealerships. I'm just waiting....

--

I'm confused (again)

[M@T]

She's not allowed to write down her thoughts for the day and call it a diary...

but she is allowed to be interviewed daily and pass on her thoughts to a journalist in a Q&A session.

The end result is the same so why bother enforcing the ban? and why isn't the Kanzas (something) Star emailing her every night to get around it? Something along the lines of... "you write down your thoughts for the day... and we'll work some relevant questions into it when you're done"

M@T

Re:They should just boycott the IOC back.

[Quikah]

Yeah, I hnave been watching the Olympics. The competition itself is far from a joke. I don't understand all these people crying about "amateur" atheletes, who cares if they are amateur or not? Their is hardly a point in having a world class competition but barring the top performers of the sport. The problem with barring professional athletes is that the best will not even care to compete if they are going to have to starve to do it, why should we limit a persons potential?

The coverage and broadcast on NBC, however are fairly bad. Mainly because of the commercials every 10 minutes. The personal athlete profiles are somewhat irritating as well.

Re:did the athletes agree?

[Ndog]

It is not illegal. Plus, the article says they can't write about it during the games. It implies that they are only limited during the Olympics, not after.

Spooon!

Re:IOC non-profit? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[Robert S Gormley]

Which bribe was that for Sydney to get the Olympics?

Re:Bah.. screw mass commercialism

[sconeu]

People train for years just for a crack at the olympics. Haven't they ever heard of getting a job ?

Actually, dumbass, in the "non-glamour" sports, many people DO hold down "real" jobs, and train intensively in their spare time. These are the true Olympic ideals.

Re:They should just boycott the IOC back.

[jms]

I haven't watched a single minute of the Olympics since they replaced the U.S. basketball team with a team of NBA pros.

i.o.c. = International Olympics Conspiracy

[ackthpt]

Fight it, buy a Fatso The Wombat toy, unofficial mascot of the Sydney and banned by the IOC


It's all true! ±5%

bah...

[hamburger lady]

Now, even the athletes don't have the right to describe their own experiences for the outside world

This is the reason I'll never compete in the Olympics. Well, that and the fact that I get winded licking stamps, but mostly for the censorship. Really.

---

Doublethink mode=high

[copito]

You're allowed to wear the tee-shirt, just not read it.
--

Re:CBC Website

[adamsc]

I've been greatly amused by the way my local paper has been publishing a mid-day edition with the latest results. They end up scooping the TV coverage by a good margin.

This tells you the sort of high-powered executives they have over at NBC - they managed to make television less immediate than the newspaper...

Re:Australia was a big mistake

[Robert S Gormley]

NBC won't be able to meet the minimum ratings they promised to advertisers and few people over here even seemed to notice the Olympics had started.

That's because NBC's coverage, from what I've heard, sucks. Ratings here in AU are fantastic, and without being xenophobic, I'd account the lack of ratings in the US as being largely to do with apathy for anything that doesn't happen in the US.

Do you know last night (Michael Johnson and Cathy Freeman winning their respective 400ms) had the highest attendance of any Olympic event ever? 112,500 people. Impressive, I think.

WTF???

[gTsiros]

"That must be why the ancient Greeks never held any Olympics. "
WHO THE FUCK SAID OLYMPICS WERE NOT HELD IN ANCIENT GREECE???
oh, and, mind you, Todays olympics have nothing to do with ancient greek olympics (aka. the TRUE olympics).
Anyone having a different opinion on this matter must die. plain and simple. Todays olympics have nothing to do with the olympics

Re:it most certainly is

[ChristTrekker]

I'm not saying they have to go by US law, per se. I'm just so accustomed to certain concepts like inalienable rights that I can't imagine a civilized country where they do not apply. (Maybe Australia is not a civilized country? *grin*)

OK I've got this figured out now. (See the above reply to mindstrm's post for explanation.) Thanks to everyone for the great discussion. (But I still think it's a wrong, stinky, rotten deal, even if it is legal. There's got to be a better solution.)

Of any sports event, the Olympics should be open

[dybdahl]

In Europe, a law prohibits a TV channel to own the rights to send a sport event that has national interest, if it doesn't send the event to most of the nation for free.

The Olympic games is a place, where every nation sends its best athletes. Nobody else than the nations themselves should be able to decide about information flow from the Olympics.

I don't thing that the Olympic games should be a big commercial event. It should be a free and peaceful event, protected by law against intellectual property misuse, where the nations put the money into it they can, and where there are no money prizes. There are lots of commercial events around - the Olympic Games will end up as "just a commercial event" if they don't change to the better.

Re:Stupidity outside of technology

[leo.p]

So let me get this straight. The only way to see the man eating shark incidence in Sidney harbor during the triathalon is to wait 24+ hours until NBC's daytime soaps are over and Bob Costas leaves the makeup chair?

Sick of it

[Greyfox]

\begin{rant}

I wish to God they would just go the hell away. I'm sick of hearing about how this or that is the official thing of the Olympics. It's so commercialized it makes my flesh crawl. They'd force you to use the Official Credit Card of the Olympics in lieu of cash if they could get away with it. Perhaps they should eliminate the porta-potties when Depends becomes the official protective undergarments of the Olympics. Will they make Smith & Wesson the official large caliber handgun of the Olympics? It makes me want to fucking PUKE (I'll use the Official Barf Bag of the Olympics.)

And the IOC is a non profit organization? How about revoking that status and taxing them on their proceeds. It doesn't sound to me like there's anything non-profit about them.

This post brought to you by the Offical Whiner of the Olympics.

\end{rant}

I'm speechless.... - free speech ? -

[Weh]

They're taking all this shit waaaaaaaaaay too far

There should be separate realistic intellectual property/copyright laws for media companies that take free speech into consideration, without it free speech will become increasingly less free as the media/content companies become more powerful.

and who needs all the shit that those media companies feed us anyhow ?

I'm glad that here in Holland public tv covers the olympics (although I don't watch it, they don't really have that many decent sports anyway; Olympic soccer ? yeah right, what kinda respect do you get for being Olympic soccer champions ?)

A Little Harsh, Aren't We?

[rmcgann]

I can't believe how harsh people are being to the IOC and NBC on this one. Perhaps people ought to consider the following:

1. The same rule applies to all professional sports. The NFL, NCAA and NBA prohibit the rebroadcast or retransmission of descriptions of the events contained within the broadcast. Yes, that's right, if Tom Brokaw wants to tell us about Monday Night Football, he must ask the NFL, who will ask ABC, and they will say no. Many of the articles on the web describing a game are from the Associated Press, and the rest come from ABC and ESPN, a wholly owned subsidiary of ABC (who is owned by Disney...don't even get me started on them).
2. NBC has a vested interest (about $1 billion dollars in advertising revenue) in keeping webcasts off the air. The IOC has a vested interest in keeping NBC happy (about $700 million worth). Next time you spend $700 million, see how happy you are when you find out your goods are available for free. No, a webcast is NOT the same as a diary, but it's all covered in the contract.
3. All of you bitch and moan about the coverage, but if you find a way to get 22.3 million people to watch Baseball at 2am, you deserve to own NBC. The Olympics this year have been regarded as the best-covered despite the 15-hour tape delay. There are over 1000 hours of events, when you consider the games are open from 8am to 10pm, with 10 or 11 events running simultaneously. Even much of Atlanta's games were tape-delayed, because certain events were at the same time as other events...you think the IOC schedules events when it's convient for Americans to watch? Given the fact that nobody would watch Gymnastics outside of the Olympics, NBC obviously knows what they are doing. The "sob stories" may seem dumb to you, but since they've appeared in Barcelona, the games are up in ratings in the most coveted advertising category, 18-49 women. Sorry guys, but we're outnumbered and we don't watch TV nearly as much as they do (on the average, at least).
4. The low ratings aren't as bad as they appear on the surface. Yes, they could be better and are below what they expected. But if advertisers spent $4 million on a 30 second spot last night (buying a spot on ABC, CBS, Fox and UPN during every hour) they wouldn't have reached half the number of viewers as their $700,000 bought on the Olympics. Ask any media buyer (like I did) and you'll hear things like "well, it's better than buying ad time on the competition". Which is all that matters...the bottom line.

Ryan

Re:No, Australia was a BRIBE. Athens was to host 2

[Robert S Gormley]

Yeah. Evidence? If anything I think Athens should have hosted 1996, not Atlanta, it being the 100th anniversary.

Or does that earn me a anti-American smackdown? :)

Re:Of course they want to control it..

[GossG]

... so I'd bet that the media companies (NBC, et al.) also paid to have a clause in the contract that NO ONE ELSE can have the coverage.

It's not that the primary licensee wanted to restrict other types of media. The various media types are licensed separately. In Canada, the TV licensee was commenting in an interview that their web page could not do any streaming video at all, and some complex restrictions on images. The rights to web publication were sold to Rogers (Canada's biggest cable provider and one of the @home franchisss), while the TV rights went to the CBC.

In the given example, rights to print publication probably went to someone like NYT or USA2day, and NBC would be irrelevant.

IOC corruption

[copito]

As I understand it, the IOC is essentially a autocracy controlled by Juan Antonio Samaranch who has been president for over 20 years IIRC. He lives in a $500,000 a year hotel suite in Geneva paid for by the IOC and did nothing about the corruption in the IOC even though by his own admission he knew of problems dating back to 1984. (He did nothing because no one came forward with names!)

He did not resign after the latest scandals although many believe he should have. He has not been directly implicated in any corruption scandal...yet.
--

Another example

[KarmaBlackballed]

Somehow restraining an athlete from describing his or her own experience to a broad audience is perverse. Yet if you choose intellectual property as a tangible product, you have to buy the Olympic Committee's right to control it.

This is just another example of the absurd corners giving merit to the psuedo-concept of "intellectual property" paints us into.

The Olympics are boring.

[b1t r0t]

I've never wanted less to watch the Olympics than this year. Not only is it over-commercialized, with fascist control over merchandising, but now they're spending more time dredging up some sob story or another that each athlete had to go through before getting there. Whatever happened to the stories of the actual competitions themselves?

Or is it that now everyone wants such polished audience-targeted formula crap that they are avoiding "live" stories in favor of something that an unemployed sitcom writer can put together weeks in advance?

I haven't watched a single minute of the Olympics, other than what I see channel-surfing past it. Thank goodness it's only on one network, and not all of them!

I find the stories of Slashdot competition much more interesting. Like the Troll Vault here. 45 mod points, 24 of them "Funny"? What an amazing human^Wtroll achivement!

Re:Stupidity outside of technology

[M@T]

Yep! The IOC made sure the only ones reporting were their 'approved' pool of 'press'. No fan diaries, no 'I saw [blah] winning the 5,000 Meter Balloon toss'.

Load of crap. The IOC can bar the athletes from sharing their experiences during the games by making it a condition of their participation.

No one signed a non-disclosure contract when they bought their Olympic tickets or sat down in front of the tv and watched an event... they can write about "the expereince" all they want.

An Excerpt from NBC

[sconeu]

BC: Hi! I'm Bob Costas, and welcome to NBC's incredibly wonderful coverage of the Olympics(tm). In fact, our coverage is so wonderful that we want you to enjoy the anticipation so much, that we wait till tomorrow! Now let's go to the events.

Cut to the 10000 meter run

Announcer1: Look! There's an American running in this race. He hasn't got a snowball's chance in hell of winning, but we're going to keep the camera trained on him, because we know you don't care about who wins if it's some foreigner.

Announcer2: That's right! Hey, look, the American guy just got lapped by some foreign dude. They should change the rules so that the Americans always come in first.

Cut to 20 minutes of commercials for Nike, IBM, and Coca-Cola

BC: Hi! I'm back. And weren't those commercials thrilling? Oh yes, here are the results of the 10,000 meter race. It was actually held yesterday, but we know you didn't want to know about them today. Some foreign guys won, so you don't care. But now we'll cut to a clip from four days ago at the pool, because we know you love to watch Americans accept their gold medals!

Cut to a clip of some US swimmer accepting their gold medal with the Star Spangled Banner playing in the background.

BC: Doesn't that just bring a tear to your eye? And we'll be showing you that clip every day! Looks off camera for a minute... What? Oh, I'm sorry. It appears that that athlete has been banned from the Games, and had her medal stripped because she said that she believes that Nike(tm) uses sweatshop labor. Darn. Now we'll have to find another heartwarming clip of an American accepting a medal. Meanwhile, it's off to the fencing competition.

Cut to yet another 20 minutes of commercials.

BC (showing bruises on his face): Sorry, I lost my head there for a minute. Management has "reminded" me that Americans don't care about fencing coverage, so we'll go to something else. Here's Rhythmic Gymnastic coverage...

Cut to the Rhythmic Gymnastic coverage

Announcer1: Hi. We're just down to the part where some pre-teen girl runs around the floor holding a huge ball, and we pretend it's a sport. We know you love this coverage.

Announcer2: Oh! She dropped the ball! Darn it, and she was an American, too! Now we'll probably have to broadcast some pictures of a foreigner. They should change the rules!

Cut 20 more minutes of commercials.

BC: Well, that wraps it up for our Olympic coverage for tonight. After your local news, we'll rerun this entire show, instead of showing other sports that WE know you don't want to watch.

Cut to 20 more minutes of commercials

Closing Credits. Includes the line: This is the property of NBC and the IOC. If you even talk to your friends about who won before we broadcast it, we'll sue your asses off!

Re:Of course they want to control it..

[M@T]

The IOC has, more and more, lost the concept of the fact that the Games are not just national spectacle, but also tales of achievement, and they're cutting off one of the really great ways to show that sort of ethic off.

Isn't this the exact reason NBS is getting such a bad name at the moment?

Re:CBC Website

[pete_p]

Who needs a sat.? I'm near the border (upstate NY) and get CBC on cable. Compared to CBC's coverage of the Olympics is so much better then NBC's.

Re:Australia was a big mistake

[kubrick]

That's because NBC's coverage, from what I've heard, sucks. Ratings here in AU are fantastic

Seven's coverage here sucks just as bad (at least if you don't have pay TV). Full of horses and beach volleyballers -- why are these considered Olympic sports?

Re:Not the only thing

[Oloryn]

Security guards have reportedly been confiscating cocacola products. It seems Pepsi is the official soft drink of the 2000 olympics, and someone thinks "official" ought to mean "the only thing allowed".

Though I think you've got the brands backwards, I'm not surprised, as something like this went on at the Atlanta games with regard to credit cards. Seems being the 'official credit card' of the Olympics was interpreted to mean that no other card could be used. Merchants who dared accept payments via anything else risked getting thrown out. Now you know why the Visa advertisement says "They don't take anything else but Visa at the Olympics". It's because Visa's 'sponsorship' of the Olympics has been turned into the purchase of monopolistic rights to credit-card usage.

Re:Australia was a big mistake

[FortKnox]

If they want to improve things, make all the athletes perform naked again, like in the original Olympics. Hell, I'd settle for topless.

Just having the new "women's trampoline" event topless would make me watch... and use my TiVo for slow-mo action...


-- "Microsoft can never die! They make the best damn joysticks around!"

Why Olympic Ratings Suck...

[sjbe]

I think people are just as interested as they ever have been with the olympics, maybe even more so. I think a lot of the problem with the bad ratings is simply because the coverage is horrible.

A) NBC delays the coverage for multiple hours in order to run it during prime-time. Unfortunately they seem to have forgotten that the one of the big things that makes the sports exciting is that you don't know who won in advance. Given the prevelence of alternative media outlets (*cough* internet *cough*) there is little reason to watch if I already know who won.

B) They only cover a limited number of "popular" sports and even then the coverage is shallow. The sports I'm most interested in are wrestling, taekwondo, and judo. However unless there is an american in a gold medal match, I will never see these sports. (and even then the match usually isn't shown in its entirety) Even for track, swimming and the other more popular sports, the coverage is shallow and very incomplete.

C) Those stupid "Olympic Moments". You know the ones. Where they show some banal feel good piece about how some athlete's parents were run over by a piece of farm equipment, his sister has cancer and his dog ran away but he persevered and made it to the olympics. Or where they waste time on some useless piece of trivia about the host country. No one I have ever spoken to likes these. We watch the olympics for one reason, the sports. I don't really care about the life history of the athletes. Just show me the sports.

D) Overcommercialization. Yes I know companies pay the bills. But that doesn't mean they have to be crass about it or run 15 minutes of commercials for every 3 minutes of athletics.

E) American-centrism. Yes, all us Americans love to see an American win. However believe it or not I still like the sports even if an american isn't involved. Yes, I really do like track if Michael Johnson doesn't win. I will still watch swimming if Jenny Thompson isn't involved. Etc. The olympics provides a rare chance to see a lot of the best athletes in the world at a wide variety of sports all in one place at one time. Whether an american wins or not, is really of very little importance.

And there are other reasons, but I'm tired of thinking about it. If NBC wants me to watch, they should get some people who actually understand sports to schedule their programming. Until then, I have better things to do.

Re:Why Olympic Ratings Suck...

[M@T]

A) NBC delays the coverage for multiple hours in order to run it during prime-time. Unfortunately they seem to have forgotten that the one of the big things that makes the sports exciting is that you don't know who won in advance. Given the prevelence of alternative media outlets (*cough* internet *cough*) there is little reason to watch if I already know who won.

This is it. Forget the bios, ad breaks, diversity of the coverage etc. This will be THE ratings killer.

For once in my life it is good to be an Australian trying to follow an international sport. Aussies, given our poor standing on the international date line, are used to sitting up till all hours of the night to watch the Formula 1 GP, Motorbike racing, World Cup soccer, cricket, NBA etc.

It happens every week, but the point is that most Australians with a real interest will sit up until all hours of the morning to see it live rather than read about it tomorrow... same with the Olympics...

As an aside, I hope they're not comparing NBCs ratings for the Sydney Olympics against Atlanta... When you're the host nation everything is different.

Re:Why Olympic Ratings Suck...

[matlhDam]

You know, I thought Channel 7 (Australian TV network) sucked badly, but I think NBC has actually managed to surpass them in the suckiness stakes. Good work, America!

Re:Not the only thing

[starman97]

They make you cover the logo of any non-sponsered products. A story in today's paper mentioned the IBM Thinkpad the the official laptop, and that Mac iBook users had to cover the Apple logo. They also went on to say that the distinctive shape and color of the iBooks made the whole logo covering moot and how Apple has made themselves a strong brand by the design of their products being so recognizable.

Re:Of course they want to control it..

[epodrevol]

YES! If I had any karma, i would rub some off now.

Re:Bah.. screw mass commercialism

[TheKodiak]

Yeah, like the glamorous American gold medalist in the women's 10m air rifle, who is going back to working in the garden department at Home Depot.

Re:Not a question of free speech..

[Angst Badger]

I dunno. Would it just be a "rule of the game" if athletes were told that their participation depended on their not marrying members of other races or belonging to a particular political party? The regulations regarding steroids are designed to ensure fair competition; regulations prohibiting free expression are designed only to maximize IOC profits at the expense of basic human rights. It's not like anything that could reasonably be construed as a trade secret is at risk.

Sure, it's legal. But it's unethical and antithetical to the spirit of the games, which is one of the things the IOC is supposed to be concerned about. Unfortunately, they seem to be mainly concerned with grasping incompetently and short-sightedly after money.

--

Re:it most certainly is

[ChristTrekker]

No, you're missing what I'm saying here. Let me post the two examples again.

• "Sure you can vote...if your grand-daddy could in 1860."
• "Sure we'll let you in here...but you better not vote next month, or something bad might happen to you."

In the first example, your rights are being restricted by an additional clause. You can't exercise your rights because of that.

In the second example, you can exercise your rights if you choose, but doing so harms you in some other way.

See the difference there? This case is an example of the latter. By exercising their rights, the Olympians are being harmed - barred from participation in the Games, or whatever. You say there's no "right" to participate in the Games, and that's true. You also don't have a "right" to be hired by an employer...yet how well would it go over if he said, "I can't hire you because you're Jewish." What? Don't you have freedom of religion? Yeah you do, and I don't think this employer would be in business after the lawsuit. Why is this any different?

The point is you cannot make exercise of rights the deciding factor in an unrelated situation. It's wrong. Threatening someone into going along with injustice is wrong. I think the IOC is fine with restricting drug use during the games, even if it is legal in some of the participating countries. This ensures a level playing field for all athletes, and that's within the scope of the Games. But what does speech have to do with fair competition? Nothing I can think of...so it shouldn't be restricted.

Re:Of course they want to control it..

[rgmoore]

I just about puked when I saw the basketball "Dream Team" a few years ago.

In defense of USA Basketball (and admittedly off topic) the US was one of the few countries that voted against letting pros play basketball in the olympics. Why? Because they knew that it was going to be disgustingly lopsided and thought that it would turn people off. The whole complaint about the US demanding to let pros play so that they could wipe the floor with all of the other countries, which many people make, is 180 degrees off.

Re:CBC Website

[Riplakish]

I hope the CBC is telling NBC to go prack themselves. It's bad enough that NBC is "black-holing" results in the USA, just to force people to watch their boring, insipid coverage, but to try and force a broadcasting company from another country to delay their coverage, because it might hurt NBC's ratings is an outrage.

Did I mention that I am an American?

Re:it most certainly is

[Lord of Caustic Soda]

If the Olympics are all about contracts, then just make sure the whole damned thing don't fuckin' claim any such crap like promoting friendship and peace, etc, etc ad infinitum ad nauseam.

So long the stupid thing claims some high falutin' ideals principles, we have the right to try to hold it to them, period.

Re:Somehow we've all missed the point

[Robert S Gormley]

"USA gymnastics has been a joke during the Olympics. I laugh now at all the hype the media gave simply because it blew up in their faces. We were horribly outclassed this time."

Not to mention swimming, lead by the ubiquitous Gary Hall Jr. "We're gonna smash the Australians like a guitar."

Meanwhile, the Australian relay teams ignore it and just smash World Records (and said Gary Hall Jr.) like a guitar. :)

Be interesting to see..

[tiwason]

It would be interesting to see what kind of papaers ("contracts") the athletes signed with the IOC..

My room mate from a few years back, swam for his country.. "Well I can't tell you anything about it, or the IOC will take me to court"

The Olympics is now one big joke, if it wasn't already....

D'ohhhh!

[mholve]

I responded in the wrong thread... Argh.

I apologize to Hairy_Potter! :(

Re:CBC Website

[wardk]

I get CBC on regular cable (probably blacked out soon) from the Seattle area.

I was up watching the 10 meter diving on CBC, at the same time on NBC they had two broadcasters attempt to jump from 10 meters. the next night during "prime time", NBC is finally showing the diving I watched to the end the previous night. It was about 18 hours old and the coverage sucked, the analysts were morons compared to the professionals who cover for CBC.

NBC should be embarassed...what is amazing is that cities are willling to mortgage themselves just get an opportunity to be the center of such nonsense.

No diaries allowed from the athletes? what utter bullshit. maybe if the olympics doesn't care for the athletes and the homes they hail from they can have the next olympics without them? This wouldn't be much bother to NBC, since we all know watching bryant gumbel chicken out at 33 feet is much more interesting that seeing someone win a medal that doesn't wrap a US flag around them at the finish line.

I love seeing the Australian athletes step up at home, they are getting a shitload of medals! go go go!

Stupidity outside of technology

[Bouncings]

See kids, there can be stupidity outside of the techno world too! The olympics can be influenced by evil too, not just IP protocols! After we compare our industries with cars and athletics, we can finally point to something non-computer-related that's so evil, so stupid, it makes you laugh. It makes you cry. It amkes you say "WTF?"

BTW, how the fans allowed to tell their stories of the games or is that privilaged to NBC as well?

Re:Stupidity outside of technology

[technos]

the fans allowed to tell their stories of the games or is that privilaged to NBC as well?

Yep! The IOC made sure the only ones reporting were their 'approved' pool of 'press'. No fan diaries, no 'I saw [blah] winning the 5,000 Meter Balloon toss'.

what's your point?

[streetlawyer]

The IOC can get $700mn for the exclusive rights.

The IOC takes measures to ensure that it can deliver the exclusive rights.

What's the news story here? If Hemos started his own site whereby he kept on publishing all the story submissions he gets from slashdot, plus his book reviews, and sold advertising in competition with slashdot, you betcha ass he'd get reminded of the little print "The Rest © 1997-2000 OSDN. ".

If you own the event, you get to set the terms on which people attend your event.

If this didn't happen, we wouldn't have big sporting events.

Re:what's your point?

[BinxBolling]

If this didn't happen, we wouldn't have big sporting events.

Not that this would be any great loss.

I don't say this because I hate sports. As a matter of fact, I love them. But I love them as an activity in which people can participate, not a spectacle for them to watch from the comfort of their couches.

Re:what's your point?

[BinxBolling]

I know you're a troll, but you can't own an event. You can own a particular description of an event, but you can't restrict other people from recounting their experiences. At least not the last time I read copyright law.

Streetlawyer's right, here. The IOC most certainly can prevent what the athletes from saying anything about their experiences at the games, simply by requiring them to sign a contract agreeing not to do so as a precondition of their participation.

Which doesn't mean it isn't an asinine thing to do.

Re:what's your point?

[danderson]

If you own the event, you get to set the terms on which people attend your event.

Does owning the event give you the right to control what people can _say_ about the event?

Re:what's your point?

[GlassUser]

So does that mean I couldn't put up a review site telling what I think about his site?

Re:what's your point?

[Fishstick]

That's a good point. Yeah, they exclusively control who can participate, and who can distribute telecasts of the events, but that doesn't extend to stopping others from publishing their accounts (except the athletes, it seems).

So what does this really do for the IOC? What would really happen if these diaries went up on the front pages of every major paper in the world? God, these athletes are the reason for the games' existance, aren't they. I understand that the IOC wants to squeeze every penny out of the thing, but this doesn't make sense. Seems like publishing diary entries wouldn't take anything away from the coverage and would only add to the public's interest and so increase viewership.

But then, the IOC has already been paid, hasn't it. NBC is the one who will live or die by the ratings. This is about trying to maintain status-quo in the coming decades.

"Concerned that the power of the Internet could eventually undermine the economic foundation of the modern Olympic movement, the Olympic committee is going to great lengths to control how and where the images and accounts of the Sydney extravaganza reach the public"

So here it is again, an attempt to control information in the interest of economics. The "modern Olympic movement" must be spared from the ravages of unchecked exchange of information and ideas. I'm sorry, but I have a hell of a lot more interest in these athletes as human beings than as sound bites from 'up close, and personal'.

This reminds me of someone frantically putting up a wall of sandbags around their house when the levee has already started to burst and 20' flood waters will inevitably innundate your house.

Man, I thought the IOC had lost touch with reality before, this dials it up to '11'.

Re:They should just boycott the IOC back.

[Bucket58]

That's exactly what I've been telling my roomates. The olympics are about sending your best at every sport to compete against the best of the rest of the world. It's almost unfair to the rest of the other countries, because they know in the back of their minds that they beat our 2nd or 3rd best, and not our best. (Basketball comes to mind).


-- Bucket

Re:And CBC even advertised for TSN's coverage (!)

[DeeKayWon]

Not surprising, since they seem to be doing a little collaborating together. I think Jim Van Horne of TSN was doing Tennis coverage for CBC, and Paul Romaniuk (sp?), TSN's main hockey guy since Jim Hughson left, is doing olympic basketball for CBC.

IBM Logos on Laptops

[Bluesee]

I just heard that if you bring a laptop into one of the stadiums and it's not an IBM laptop (IBM is the Official Laptop of the Games), you must tape over the logo on your laptop, I guess on the outside chance that a camera might be pointed at your laptop at some point in time. Geez, if the official shoe is Nike and I am wearing Reeboks, should I put those little yellow nuclear power plant booties over them? It seems wrong, and you know why? Because it is wrong.

I remember the old days when karma was something you bought off a monk.

Re:They should just boycott the IOC back.

[jayhawk88]

That's the point: there are no more amateur athletes, or at least very few. And you can bet that those getting paid aren't going to risk their money on something relatively trivial like on-line diaries.

Is anyone here even watching the Olympics? I haven't watched a minute: to me, they're a joke. The only thing the Olympics stand for these days is selling french fries and shoes. The IOC might as well just sell the Olympic name to Nike and be done with it.

Re:Australia was a big mistake

[Johnny Starrock]

From what I've happened to see, the Olympic telecasts in America have been cancelled to show human intrest stories about American olympic athletes.

A shame too, I used to love the Olympics. I detected a downhill slide with the Campbell's "Mommy's Dead" soup commercial during the Winter Games. (Anyone else remember that?)

Feh, I got to go to the US Grand Prix yesterday and now the Colts are on Monday Night Football. I'm getting my sports fix juuuust fine.. =)
-----------

Of course they want to control it..

[M-2]

Especially since, in general, the ratings for the Olympic broadcasts have been getting steadily worse for the past two decades. It's quite possible that NBC will not make ANY money off of the Olympic broadcasts this time around. Add to the sheer level of botching they've had with the release of information and the display of the events, and you can see why this is not looking good for their shareholders this time.

Unfortunately, the diaries of the Olympians are just the sort of thing that would bring a lot of interest to the Games. Knowing what some of them were thinking, doing, planning... who in the competition they really thought were tough and who they didn't think were actual competition.

The IOC has, more and more, lost the concept of the fact that the Games are not just national spectacle, but also tales of achievement, and they're cutting off one of the really great ways to show that sort of ethic off.

But this is the same bunch where they fired half of the main committee for bribery a few years back, so I'd bet that the media companies (NBC, et al.) also paid to have a clause in the contract that NO ONE ELSE can have the coverage. With that sort of patronage/corruption in place, the mediots could then dictate that any 'diaries' are violations of that clause, as it takes away from their 'exclusive coverage', as well as taking away from the deep insights of Bob "Jack Handley" Costas.
----

Re:Of course they want to control it..

[abolith]

/START RANT I couldn't agree more. If only someone could setup a "NEW" olympics. one where the athletes were judged on the things that matter and did not include so much bullshit. I for one am sick and tires of watching what is supposed to be a "friendly" compition between countries turn into a set of corperate sponsered games. Can we say IOC is a sellout, not to themselves but to the rest of us and to the athletes. Afterall they are the one who put in the hard work I say lets have some of them ( the athletes ) set up a new lympics, one that remaiis true to the dream that was invsioned soooo long ago. /END RANT

Re:Of course they want to control it..

[gorilla]

The ratings have been falling in direct coorelation to the increase of inclusion of "sports" such as syncronized swimming, where there is no objective standard, and instead a judge has to decide if they like what the performers are doing. Of course, the American judge never likes what the Russians are doing, and the Russian judge never likes what the Americans are doing. It's become a big game of politics, and it stinks.

Now obviously a coorelation is not a cause, but it's just one example of how the modern Olympics is no longer about how well people can run, jump throw things etc, and instead it's become a huge commerical jingoistic bribrary ridden folly.

Go back to the focus being on the athletes. Limit it to real sports that the winner can be objectivly measured. Make them the best adults in their fields. No more 14 year old kids with eating disorders too scared of their coaches to quit. Get rid of the national anthems in the medals, the national team coloured tracksuits and the country names in the scoreboards. If Michael Johnson or Alexei Nemov win it's not because they're American or Russian, it's because they are Michael Johnson or Alexei Nemov.

Re:Of course they want to control it..

[rschwa]

What I don't get is this:
(from the article) "And any journalist can interview the athletes..."

I've seen the local sports drone interviewing local athletes at the games, so how is this different from a newspaper asking an athlete 'What did you write in your diary today?'

I can see the problem if some 'unliscensed' media outlet set up "'s Wonderful World of Olympic Excitement" and streamed video, and sold tshirts etc, but I don't think a running diary in the Spoonerville Post equates to the same thing at all

money.

Re:Of course they want to control it..

[M@T]

The rights to web publication were sold to Rogers (Canada's biggest cable provider and one of the @home franchisss), while the TV rights went to the CBC.

It's funny that the IOC sold the rights to web publication to a particular company for each country... I would have thought one web company could do the lot. With TV and media, assuming they can't sell the material onwards, you have a fairly specific coverage area. With the web, as well know, those boundaries disappear with Rogers being in direct competition with every other web site who bought the rights.

They only way I can see them seperating themselves from the opposition is by focusing your content heavily on local competitors - which means a lotta wasted content you've paid big bucks for.

Re:Of course they want to control it..

[M@T]

Isn't this the exact reason NBS...

err NBC.

Stop before you start.... its a typo.

Re:Of course they want to control it..

[Bieeardo]

I wasn't aware of that; then again, I wasn't accusing the States' gov't of anything. One way or the other, the "Dream Team" was definitely a nail in the Olympic coffin... regardless of who was actually at fault for it.

Re:Of course they want to control it..

[Bieeardo]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The Olympics must be stopped. I'm tired of the IOC's antics, the increasingly disturbing lack of anything resembling amateur sport in the games, and the out-and-out commoditization of the games.

I just about puked when I saw the basketball "Dream Team" a few years ago. The increasing pervasiveness of performance enhancing drugs (Ben Johnson, "Ma's Army", etc.), followed closely by the increasing number of Olympic-sized egos have permanently turned me off the games.

I want the UN to purchase the rights to the Games, and sit on them. Anyone can come up with their own version of the games, and the IOC is free to keep running them-- the catch is, the Olympic names, trademarks, etc., cannot be used. Let's see how long it takes people to tune out when the knee-jerk "Olympics are Important!" reflex is taken out of the equation.

Re:Of course they want to control it..

[Life Blood]

Paying big bucks for the right to the Olympic telecasts is not about making money. It is about not losing money. IIRC no olympic telecast in recent memory has made turned a profit, however the networks without the Olympics lose money even worse. Is anyone running anything but reruns opposite the Olympics? Of course not, why waste a season premiere if everyone is watching dumbasses fix gymnastic vault horses.

Re:They should just boycott the IOC back.

[jms]

I don't understand all these people crying about "amateur" athletes, who cares if they are amateur or not? Their is hardly a point in having a world class competition but barring the top performers of the sport.

A great deal of the mystique surrounding the Olympics was the fact that it was a world-class amateur competition. The professionalization of the Olympics has utterly destroyed the one thing that made it unique. Every sport has it's world championships for the professionals; they come every year, and if you want to see professional athletes, you have plenty of opportunities to do so. You'll get a good show. That's what they are paid to give you.

The Olympics were different. In order to be an Olympic athlete, you had to not only become a world class athlete, but you had to make the tremendous sacrifice of not performing for money, and you were entering a competition that only took place every four years, which meant that most athletes would only expect to compete in one, or maybe two games. You find it hard to believe that anyone would do it, but before the IOC destroyed the games, that was the price! Often, the Olympics were the "last stop" before an athlete turned pro -- and part of the tension was that the stakes were so high -- these were people who, given the choice between a professional career and a chance at an Olympic medal, chose the latter, and everyone recognized the sacrifice as well as the accomplishment. It was really something much more special than it is now.

Granted, the eastern bloc nations often cheated on the amateur requirement, and the IOC had the choice of whether to enforce the amateur requirement, or accomodate the cheaters. They took the low road, again and again, and now they wonder why the world is disillusioned with their corrupt, ruined games.

Now the Olympics are nothing more than the world professional sports championships, except that it comes every two years, so it isn't even a novelty anymore. I don't want to watch a "dream team" of overpaid, asshole NBA players beat the hell out of a third-world team and go on TV to tell us all what a snooze the game was and how bored they are and how they can't wait to pick up their gold medals so they can get back in time to rest up for the NBA season. I want to see the best American college athletes get together to try for a medal, knowing that it's a one-shot; they will never have a second chance -- the NCAA championships have a million times the heart and emotion that the Olympics will ever have. Maybe they should let NBA players play in the NCAA championships too. Why limit their potential?

The problem with barring professional athletes is that the best will not even care to compete if they are going to have to starve to do it, why should we limit a persons potential?

The aspect of personal sacrifice is now gone from the games, replaced by corporate greed, mandatory non-disclosure agreements for the athletes to "shut them up" so they don't interfere with what's important -- selling the rights to cover the games, and drug tests for the athletes to draw attention away from the real source of corruption - the IOC.

Unless you count a millionaire basketball player making the "sacrifice" of having to make do with a gold medal that should belong to an amateur athlete, instead of taking a paycheck this week.

Sorry, but the Olympics are now just another manifestation of of bloated, corporate crap.

Re:They should just boycott the IOC back.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice idea, but not going to work. Having done quite a few international competitions in an olympic sport (although I won't be taking part in olympics anytime soon) there are few formalities involved which basically make this an impossible equation.

Just to be able to enter competitions (olympics too) you're going to have to sign a declaration that states that you are going to be in full compliance with the rules and regulations involved. In my sport these mandate you to take part in the interviews and other post-competition activities(medal ceremony, etc..) involved provided you do sufficiently well.

If you don't you might lose your some or all of your price money and definetly get a really bad name for yourself. You might even get banned from entering competitions in future. I can't think of a single athlete who has worked hard and then would just throw it all away because their diaries can't be published.

In order for this to work people doing it would have to be really really famous and those people have the most to lose. All corporate sponsorships etc. The lesser known medaling athletes would be just more than happy to have accomplished what they did and would not jeopardize anything(future corporate sponsorships).

Re:I would like to tell what I think...

[ralmeida]

I don't know where you are, but rumor has it that the games are being held in "Sydney".

I live in Brazil... I checked and everyone here writes "Sydney", too, but before the olympics it was "Sidney" all around. As in "kidney"... :)

--

IOC 0\/\/n5 j00!

[Fatal0E]

Not only are they not permitting players diaries but any web page reporting on the games is also in violation of their copyright.
And if copyleft tries to print the DNA sequence that the IOC uses to verify Olympic merchandise, Copyleft will lose custody of employee first borns.

IOC fears live-streaming?

[Global-Lightning]

The IOC is missing a huge opportunity:

LS technology could become another revenue stream if they apply it properly. By the 2004 Olympics, LS should be sufficiently evolved to rival TV broadcast. Now instead of having a single channel with predetermined broadcasts, there could be channels dedicated to each sport and country. If they want to get fancy they could use a customizable portal. Revenue could be brought in by subscription or advertisement. The ad model will most likely succeed, since subscription on cableTV was tried a couple Olympiads ago and failed miserably

The only issue I see with this will be NBC and other TV broadcaster, and if their broadcast rights will cover only TV or all broadcast. Of course, NBC itself could setup the portal...

The possibilities are wide open.

So instead of the Nike IBM McDonald Disney Olympics on NBC, you'll have the Microsoft IBM RealAudio Intel Olympics on Yahoo!

Careful Now

[Weh]

Offtopic

Unfair to gag athletes

[Bilestoad]

Are the athletes required to sign any legal agreement waiving their rights to speak about the experience? If not, why not just tell the IOC to go to hell?

As a former functionary of Franco's fascist Spanish government, J. A. Samaranch might feel like shooting dissenters, but that's not allowed any more.

Re:Unfair to gag athletes

[sugarmatic]

Not only that, one can read more than one Catalan or Spanish history of the war to find Sr. Samaranch directly responsible for brutal intimidation of students and other even marginal resistors, and is suspected of involvement in several disappearances with substantial evidence. He was responsible for shutting down independent journalist enterprises (and took pride in this fact). He is widely regarded with a rancid taste in the mouth of a certain generation of Spaniards. Yet he became involved with the IOC by the same connections that maintained his position in Francoist Spain. Very ironic.

Somehow we've all missed the point

[sedawkgrep]

...of the Olympics. What was once a noble event for participant and country alike has turned into a corrupt, media-choked farce. In Greek times, it was meant to be the epitome of competition - one person, only representing themself, against the best the world had to offer. The glory of the self.

I'm not going to start a rant here but I do want to make a few points

Does anybody care how the basketball teams (men and womens) do? The honor those players extoll can only be from getting the EXPERIENCE OF BEING THERE; not from the competition. How can they possibly have any national pride over their victories? There would be more competition having them play the NCAA champs. This has been and will probably always continue to be a sham for the networks & NBA to make big $.

USA gymnastics has been a joke during the Olympics. I laugh now at all the hype the media gave simply because it blew up in their faces. We were horribly outclassed this time.

Bah now I'm just pissed off. Only events I care to watch are the decathlon, table tennis, judo, tae kwon do, boxing and gymnastics...half of which apparently don't get airtime in the US.

Nice.

sedawkgrep

The IOC is corrupt.

[kevlar]

How many times to officials need to be bribed, and caught before people realize this?

whack-a-mole solves all

[ShinGouki]

i think it's time to present the IOC with a giant middle finger (figuratively speaking) and have ALL the athletes keep diaries on one (or more) websites...could you imagine the IOC trying to explain an effort to intimidate or strip _everyone_ of their medals? (or whatever the penalty they've come up with is) :)

yet another monolithic, greedy, power-hungry entity being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century by those goofy net.people.

and yes, they ARE right to fear us...our very existence undermines their proprietary, controlling way of life.


-dk

"All accounts and descriptions of this event...

[JanKotz]

without the express written consent of XYZ group is prohibited".

It sounds to me as though nobody is allowed to say what went on during the competition without permission from the IOC/NFL/whomever, but what I really think it means is that their players can't relay any information about the competition outside of certain parameters, e.g. players can only talk to the TV crew for 20 minutes after the game (since the group is getting mucho $$$ from them), before the rest of the (pretty much nonpaying) press can. It's kind of weird, but it seems fair.
--

Re:"All accounts and descriptions of this event...

[tiwason]

Said NFL and big league athletes are getting a part of the pie the networks and others pay to the NFL to play the game.. (maybe not directly, but in some manner).. Therefore I think its ok to limit them to who they can talk to.. Plus all the time after the games to other press and media they describe what happen on certain plays.. Thats perfectly legal..

Why is it not alright for Olympic athletes who do not make a penny from the IOC or from their countries (ok some do) for going there... but they can't even describe what happen... its crazy..

A related rant...

[Saxton]

It's because of this, that I'm unable to listen to Triple J in the states, because this Australian station may talk about the olympics during parts of it's broadcast, and also has minor olympic coverage. So therefore, for their safety from the IOC, they stop their broadcasts 24/7 until the Olympics are over. This applies to some other .au stations as well...

It's also kinda pathetic that because of this, no one can broadcast any live video of the olympics... so in the states, you're forced to watch NBC, and you can't watch any other station broadcasting anywhere in the world... assuming you don't have satellite. Kinda has pissed me off, as I stream my video, as I don't have a television. Therefore, I have not seen any Olympics this year.


_________

Re:A related rant...

[tjwhaynes]

It's also kinda pathetic that because of this, no one can broadcast any live video of the olympics... so in the states, you're forced to watch NBC, and you can't watch any other station broadcasting anywhere in the world... assuming you don't have satellite. Kinda has pissed me off, as I stream my video, as I don't have a television. Therefore, I have not seen any Olympics this year.

See if your cable provider has CBC, who are broadcasting from Canada and carry the events live. Then you can use NBC as a fallback to catch the events you missed!

Cheers,

Toby Haynes

Re:A related rant...

[Masem]

which is really odd, because all the national radio and television stations in the states are giving the results of the days events before NBC plays them. A good example, on Opening Day, I heard whom the final torch bearer was on NPR at 5pm CST, then watched it at 12pm CST. I felt that something about the suprise was lost then, but I don't know if I blame NPR for that or what. (NPR has done the days results at 5pmish since). Another good example was that the results of the gymnastic tourney were reported by Tom Brokaw on the NBC Nighty News before they were shown in NBC's broadcast.

It's understandable that NBC is trying something in *american* television that hasn't been done before: broadcast something that literally happens completely opposite to prime time for 3 weeks straight, and they might make errors. But most ppl have agreed that NBC made poor choices in the games coverage this year. What they should have done is should have converted MSNBC to broadcast the live feed of the olympics (delaying the business news slightly in the early morning hours), then used a 4hr block on NBC's prime time to go over the day's highlights, with certain events in full (such as gynamistics, etc), cutting down longer events (soccor, basketball), and still get all the appeal that they needed.

I have a feeling that because of these olypmics however, you're not going to see another olypmics that doesn't occur within 10hrs of LA (eg limiting it to the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Western Asia.)

Which suddenly reminds, what *did* they do with the Winter Olympics in 1998 in Japan? As the WO get much less coverage, I can't remember if they tape delayed or what, and yet they have the same problem as Aussie.

Re:A related rant...

[rotor]

You haven't missed much. NBC is putting on the absolute worse broadcast of the Olympics that I have seen. They seem to think that we'd rather tune in to a sporting event to see hours of Austrailian history than the sports themselves. It has been so bad that this US station only showed under ten of the thirty US womens gymnastics performances in both the prelims and the finals. The other sports are covered in this same spotty manner.

Re:A related rant...

[TheTomcat]

Woah! Now _THAT'S_ not something you see every day. Americans wanting to watch Canadian media.

Generally speaking, our (Canadia) mass media is a joke.

why not?

[Sauron23]

Why not have the athletes post there diaries on one of the sponsors sites. The IOC and the sponsor get the banner ads and we get the stories.

Free Speech?

[yelims]

Does this not violate a US citizen's right to free speech? I am a huge olympics fan, and I love reading what the athletes have to say. Unfortunately NBC just does not have enough airtime (even between NBC, CNBC & MSNBC) to share all of the athletes memories. This is a very unfortunate situation, that I hope the IOC will let go of.

Not For Profit Organization?

[MythoBeast]

When you work for a not-for-profit organization, one of the things that you learn is that only the organization itself is not allowed to profit. All of the employees, managers, board members, and executives of said organization are allowed to get filthy stinking rich off of it, if they can manage such.

The laws require that employees and contractors of such organizations be paid along the median for any particlar set of services. Have you checked out the median pay for corporate executives lately? They're almost invariably based on the value and revenue of the company. Let's think about this for a moment...

Mythological Beast

"If"

[OlympicSponsor]

"If you own the event, you get to set the terms on which people attend your event."

"If", indeed. Does the IOC "own" the Olympics? If your answer is "yes", please indicate what it means to "own" a sporting event.

Let's use a baseball game as an example. As we all know, "rebroadcast without the express written permission of Major League Baseball" is not allowed. But if I attended the game, can I make a webpage that gives a general outline of the game. Sure! I'm not "rebroadcasting" anything--I'm reporting (in my own words) on an event. You can run an event but you can't own the rights to tell people about it.

"If this didn't happen, we wouldn't have big sporting events."

That must be why the ancient Greeks never held any Olympics.
--

Re:"If"

[streetlawyer]

If your answer is "yes", please indicate what it means to "own" a sporting event

Errrrr ... to own it. To own the trademark (remember the Ted Turner World Peace Games?) and to organise it.

But if I attended the game, can I make a webpage that gives a general outline of the game. Sure! I'm not "rebroadcasting" anything--I'm reporting (in my own words) on an event

Major League Baseball decides to give you that right as part of the terms on which it sells you your ticket. You haven't signed a contract saying that you won't do this; the Olympic athletes have (a fact which Slashdot chose not to post, and you chose not to bother finding out).

You can run an event but you can't own the rights to tell people about it

Nonsense; owning the event means that you control access to it; if you are minded to, you can only allow access to people who agree to respect the exclusivity of your broadcasting rights. This is not exactly a controversial matter of law.

That must be why the ancient Greeks never held any Olympics.

Perhaps if we return to a slave economy, your economic model will once more be viable for a few citizens.

Re:"If"

[Veteran]

If you are pointing a gun at my head and I sign a contract saying I'll pay you $1M, it is not valid. But an Olympic athlete has a choice: they can sign the contract and go to Australia, or they can not sign the contract and not go.

What is it that you are threatening to take away from a person when you hold a gun to their head? Everyone dies - all life ends eventually. The answer is that you are threatening to take away their dreams - their possibilities. That is exactly what the coercion the IOC is using against those athletes is doing.

You can only see the most direct level of coercion: physical force or torture. Ultimately what any threat does is cause pain. Pain is the central nervous system's way of reporting physical damage is occurring to itself. It doesn't matter how that damage is done to a person's central nervous system: all pain is signals which are integrated by the brain. You wish to exclude only that pain which is directly caused and which you are sensitive enough to detect . I am simply a little more aware than you are, and I can see that coercion is almost always wrong.

Just because the actions of the IOC are legal, doesn't mean that they are right. I'll repeat it again, just because you can get someone's signature on a piece of paper doesn't make what you are doing right. The motivations of 'Guido' with a gun and the IOC with a non - negotiable contract are virtually indistinguishable; each is trying to get something which it hasn't earned. It is the similarity of their motivations which cause me see their actions as similar.

When you trick someone into signing a 'con'tract you are trying to get something you don't deserve. You can claim that you deserve it because you are cleverer than the people whom you con, but 'Guido' is cleverer than you are: he had his gun at your head before you got yours out - so by the 'who is more clever' argument he is entitled to your wealth.

Contracts obtained by coercion are wrong - it doesn't matter what the coercion is.

Of course the law agrees with you, but as has often been pointed out, the law is an ass.

Re:"If"

[OlympicSponsor]

In the early part of the 20th Century many (most? all?) restaurants in the American South had signs saying "No Coloreds". So a black entering such an establishment who subsequently got ejected, beaten and/or killed was really the one to blame, according to your logic. After all, the rules were plainly posted.

And don't give me a bunch of BS about "how can you compare online diaries to rampant racism" or other such nonsense. I'm not equating the two--I'm pointing out that fairness and legality are not synonymous by use of an extreme example. Your task is to show how the IOCs rules are both legal AND fair. "The Olympians don't have to play if they don't like it" isn't much of a response considering it is the only chance for many of them and the IOC has a monopoly.
--

And CBC even advertised for TSN's coverage (!)

[peterarm]

When CBC was showing coverage of the Canadian men in the beach volleyball quarterfinals, the women's marathon was being run. CBC did some switching back and forth, and some split-screens, but what really impressed me was that Brian Williams (a CBC commentator) actually said (when they were switching back to volleyball) that anyone who wanted to watch the marathon could see it live on TSN (Canada's ESPN). Phenomenal.

did the athletes agree?

[ChristTrekker]

Do the athletes agree to have their freedom of speech limited in order to be Olympians? If not, then where does the IOC get off telling them they cannot continue writing an online diary, or putting their own personal pictures on their website, or whatever? I don't care if some corp "bought the exclusive rights" or whatever. If I'm a private (U.S.) citizen, I have freedom of speech!

If it were me, I'd continue to post my diary regardless. I never would have agreed to anything that said I couldn't. And I'd promote it with a logo that looked like 5 interlinking colored squares. Call it parody, if you will.

Re:did the athletes agree?

[_xeno_]

Yes, they probably did agree to it. Presumably, to play in the games, you need to sign some sort of sign-up form which says amoung other things that you agree to follow the rules set by the IOC. These rules may include things like saying that all football games follow FIFA rules. They also most likely include provisions against using performance-enhancing drugs and the likes. And, now, they say you can't talk about your experiences during the Olympics unless your talking through IOC approved channels.

Since IANAOlympian and probably never will be (probably? definately!) I've never actually looked at what they say, but usually, whenever you sign up to play in any type of tournament, you agree to the rules they set. Most of the rules are good: specifying that the ruling of the judges is final, the exact ruleset used for a game, etc. So I would find it quite unlikely that the athletes didn't agree to it. More likely than not, they were warned to stop it or forfeit any chance of a metal. It's still the Olympics, so that's probably quite a powerful threat...

Re:did the athletes agree?

[ChristTrekker]

I don't see how anybody could agree with doing something illegal. I own my own life, and making it impossible for me to share my own experiences is not right. This kind of stuff makes it impossible for Olympians to write an autobiography, doesn't it? "Hey, I bought Bruce Jenner's book, but chapter 12 just says, 'Deleted by agreement with IOC.' There isn't a single mention of him competing in the 1976 Games at all!" Feh. Whatever.

Next thing you know, the athletes will be forbidden to call home to talk to mom. "They might pass along news about the Games!" Again, feh. Whatever.

Re:did the athletes agree?

[_xeno_]

As is evident from people selling movie rights, it is possible to "own" someone else's life, or portions of it...

Bottom line is, morality aside, they probably did agree to it. It may not be right, but they probably did agree to it. And once you agree to something, you can't just say "well, that's unfair!", you've agreed to it.

Re:did the athletes agree?

[ChristTrekker]

Then get the contract nullified. If it isn't right, change it.

If 50 Vietnamese immigrants signed a contract "agreeing" to be brought over here, work 16 hours days 7 days a week for $.50/hour, and sleep on the floor in a damp 5x10 room with no temp control, would you just throw your hands up and say, "Well, you agreed to it"??? Heck no, that "contract" would get nullified in court, and you'd probably go to jail for violating someone's rights.

In the US at least, the Constitution is the highest law, and you can't legally have someone agree to something contrary, contract or no. (IANAL)

Another Reason OlympicsSuck.com Was Created...

[Ron Bennett]

The whole Olympic experience downright sucks!

It sucks so much I even put up a "suck" website recently in protest; and just added a guestbook so others can too share their views too of how the Olympics suck!

Olympics Suck: overpaid athletes, cheating, big money, and corruption.

Sponsorship

[Hard_Code]

According to the news I've heard, in some cases they are banning vendors from selling products that look like official sponsors' products. E.g., a burger stand was stopped from selling burgers because they looked too much like McDonalds or something. If that is not the height of stupidity and corporatization I don't know what is. What is really ironic is seeing athletes from third world countries plastered with logos of the likes of Nike and other companies, who are, in their very own country, exploiting the workforce with sweatshops and child labor. Dave Barry had a recent column on the 2000 Ford Exxon DuPont Toyota Traveler's Insurance McDonald's Olympics brought to you by Coca Cola, that was pretty good.

Ah, well, see sig.

Re:Sponsorship

[TowleR]

The article by Dave Barry is available here, Miami Herald

Re:Sponsorship

[Brazilian Geek]

Speaking of sponsorship, an intresting little ditty...

The Brazilian 4 x 100m swimming team (that won bronze after the aussies and the americans) was almost disqualified because one of the athletes had a minuscule logo from one of his Brazilian sponors on the shirt he was wearing.

IOC didn't approve (i.e. received money from) the Brazilian sponsor so they really were gonna take the medal away. They gave up after a few days and a lot of begging on part of the athletes - I suspect that the brazilian company gave Samaranch a nice fat envelope at his wife's funeral.

And on a related note

[marklein]

Also, has anybody noticed how much the IOC web site SUCKS ASS??!!!! You go there looking for scores and schedules and ALL the informamtion is a day old, sometimes TWO days old!! Some sports aren't even covered!!!!! WTF? I can't use enough explatives and exclamation points to demonstrate how bad the site is and how much of a Nazi inspired group of holes I think they are.

Log on to NBC Website for more info... don't do it

[big]

I was watching an event yesterday and actually checked their
website during an event when NBC flashed the 'log on for more info' banner at
the bottom of the screen.

What 'extra info' did I find out?

How about the final results of the event that I watching.

Nice one NBC. I'm getting to the point that
I can't even watch a tape of the events because
it's hard to find the actual events when
fast forwarding past 1/3 commercials, 1/2 sob&banter.

Its really criminal how hypocritical NBC is. they have the gaul to broadcast those painful profiles of people from small countries who have fought dictatorships in the name of victory and game and sport .... trying to promote that universal brotherhood schmaltz ... and then they are demonstrating the most severe case of mind control with the ads and the monopolozation of the airwaves.

CBC Website

[MarkKomus]

I don't have a link for it, but apparently NBC is trying to get the CBC here in Canada to stop updating their olympic web site as soon as the events are completed because NBC's coverage does not occur until later the next day.

There have also been reports on how many American's near the border and with satalite have actually been watching CBC coverage because they are showing events live (even at 5am), while NBC is always a day behind.

Re:CBC Website

[Anonymous Coward]

just like the difference between watching hockey on cbc and fox (stanley cup finals) the major u.s. networks are nowhere near as good as cbc's sports programming. also what right does nbc have to own a monopoly to what we watch, if you get cbc on satellite or cable?

Re:CBC Website

[nezroy]

Never mind "live", how about "decent"? CBC's coverage could be three months delayed and I'd still prefer it to the patently pathetic job NBC is doing...

Re:CBC Website

[markana]

Just one of the benefits of living in Seattle - a ton of very good CBC coverage from the Vancouver station (thanks, CBUT!). Who needs Nothing But Commercials???

Re:CBC Website

[hey]

The Globe and Mail ("Canada's Nation Newspaper") covers the Olympics here: http://www.globeandmail.com/thegames/. Notice no use of the O-word in the URL and not a single mention on the site either. I think they are afraid to use it - or maybe refuse to pay a licensed fee?

Re:CBC Website

[Misch]

Who needs Sattelite when you live in Buffalo, NY? The canadian coverage there has been great, and I'm glad that we're getting their feed over our local cable networks :-)

Re:it most certainly is

[DonGenaro]

What do you think a Non -Disclosure Agreement is, You can see X provided you dont say anything about it. perfectly legal

IOC Cracks down on cold medicine

[kevin805]

As part of drug inquisition, the judges have stripped a gymnast of her gold medal for taking pseudo-ephedrine for a cold. Pseudo-ephedrine, of course, is the safe synthetic drug developed as a replacement for ephedrine which is a stimulant and not good for you.

If you buy a cold medicine that is marked "non-drowsy", it's probably pseudoephedrine. What's next? Ban Tylenol?

I sure am glad there's sufficient numbers of fanatics out there making the world safe for busy bodies.

More IOC nazi-ism

[the_tsi]

In 1996 in Atlanta, the Olympic folks were raising cain over legitimate uses of the word "Olympic" and "Olympics." They sued the fuck out of a little pizza place in the suburbs called "Olympic Pizza" that had been there long before Atlanta was chosen as a host city. I'm sure everyone else will report about this... it made the front page of the Atlanta Journal-Constipation a year before the games went up.

-Chris

It's not just to protect money streams

[Froid]

More important than protecting mere money streams (in which case the IOC may be overstepping its bounds) is protecting the IOC's trademark rights to "the Olympics". I know your knee-jerk reaction to such a statement would be to say "But the IOC has no legitimate trademark on the word 'olympics'", which may be true in general terms (and the IOC is rather heavy-handed in clamping down on diners and other unrelated economic uses of the word, which is unfair and improper). But here, we're talking about olympic athletes using their prominence within the Olympics to make a quick buck by promoting messages contrary to the message the IOC has ordained.

Any other legitimate claim of trademark infringement would be lauded on Slashdot, as you'll remember if you recall the IMac v. IPC nonsense a year back. But somehow, because we're talking about corporations battling individuals and not corporations merely battling each other, this has changed? Think carefully and reflect on your own hyporcrisy, and you may come to the correct view.

Cheers,
Froid

What would they do?

[bigbigbison]

The athletes should have had some guts and published anyway. Can you imagine the media coverage of an athlete being stripped of their medal because they published something in their hometown paper? It would be on every news cast on every channel. They would be forced to change their rules.

olympics suck now

[austad]

I don't even care about the olympics anymore. It's just one giant fucking commercial financed by telecommunications companies and sportswear. It's pathetic and it makes me sick.

"Now we cut live to coverage of the 500meter whatchawawiggy. ....trailia takes the gold! Please stay tuned for 25 minutes of minutes of Nike commercials."

I was going to vote Libertarian, but given Ralph Nader's anti-corporate stance, I'll probably vote for him.

Re:olympics suck now

[Octopus]

Rock on, my brother! "Gore and Bush make me wanna RALPH!"

my intelectual property.

[mrsalty]

Offical Notification.
I have the sole rights of ownership and distribution of anything i do or say (unless it get me in legal trouble, in which case someone else is to blame). Any future news stories that i might be involved in must be OKed by me in writing before publication. Any violation of this agreement will result in swift retribution in te form of a Heavy Sack Beating (tm)

Re: NBC losing money

[anonymous loser]

It's quite possible that NBC will not make ANY money off of the Olympic broadcasts this time around.

Actually, NBC turned a profit (around $200 million I think) before the Olympics even started. They paid around $700 to the IOC for the rights to broadcast the games, then turned around and promptly sold close to $1 billion in advertising. They claim their expenses (equipment, labor, etc.) run around $100 million.

Of course, I don't expect the same strategy will work so well next time, what with the dismal ratings and all...

Definately a Question of Free Speech

[winterstorm]

We are all in serious danger of having our right to free speech being taken away, not by governments, but by corporations. It is plain and simple speech piracy... we open our mouths and they immediately grab everything we have to say and declare that it belongs to them.

Not to put too fine a point on it

[public-editor1]

...but the IOC is headed by a fascist, so this isn't *too* much of a surprise. Juan Antonion Samaranch helped Franco "clean up" Spain and since he bought his way into the IOC, he's been introducing rich people to mayors and such, dishing out the games to the highest bidder. He and the "non-profit" IOC have had a stranglehold for many years, and it's so sad to see that athletes are forced to do the job that journalists can't. As an editor in Canada watching Toronto line up to receive the dreaded rear admiral, it's beyond pathetic.

Re:Not to put too fine a point on it

[Fist Prost]

BTW, good job up there with the CBC web site. I hope they do not bow to NBC and take down the scores. If you want to piss off the IOC and show what you feel of NBC and it's pathetic coverage, then please spread the results like wildfire as soon as they come in. Don't even say the word "spoiler", just post anywhere and start listing scores.

Fist Prost

"We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."

Only if the IOC allows it...

[Zaaf]

Perhaps the IOC will ban all filmcrews and photographers taking pictures of the event. They stopped the press taking pictures of falling horses. If a photographer was captured, then he had to hand in his badge and leave for home.
So it's unlikely that the IOC will allow pictures of swimmers attacking sharks.

---

Trademark Infringement

[El]

So I take it then, that they will be suing the Special Olympics for trademark infringement?

Anyone else think NBC's Coverage sucks Hot Grits?

[Kagenin]

I swear to god. I've never seen them do worse coverage of such time-honored games. I think I heard NPR do a review of NBC's (un)coverage, and the critic said that their Target Audience was a 20-Something Female. Seroiusly - how many 20-year-old females are watching the games? How many more goddamn equistrian events do I have to sit through, knowing that something actually cool, like Judo or Tae Kwon D(em)o, or Fencing or Boxing is getting a total browing? I wanna see some real wrestling, not Synchronized Diving! Kagenin

First rule of the *lympics:

[embobo]

You do not talk about the *lympics.

They should just boycott the IOC back.

[jms]

Well, if the athletes feel strongly about this, they should get together and agree not to participate in any interviews at all. I'll bet that if a few gold medal winners, when presented with a camera and microphone, were to tell the reporter that as a protest against being prohibited from publishing their diary, they were declining to give any interviews at all, I bet that the IOC would get the message pretty quickly.

No surprise, Samaranch is/was a fascist (really)

[ozborn]

Considering Franco was a member of the fascist Falange (joined in 1955) and a personal friend of Franco this really shouldn't surprise anyone... I posted one reference for this below, but a search on google on Samaranch and fascist will turn up quite a bit more.

Utah Newspaper with Article on Samaranch

WTF

[arothstein]

the athletes have a recourse: don't attend the games.

Oh, you want to attend the games. Great. We've got a few rules for you. A few rules governing your conduct before your event(s), a few rules governing your conduct during your event(s), and a few rules governing your conduct after your event(s). If you don't agree with these rules, stay home. Next.

Re:WTF

[cetan]

If I was an athelete and I had a choice between going for the Olympic Gold Medal and staying home I would probabaly just sign the paper and not talk to my hometown paper or my own website.

It's unfortunate, but these atheletes have been training and training and training for _years_. It would be very very tough to just throw it all away. At least it would be for me.

On a related note: NPR did a really good story on the American Olympic athletes that boycotted the 1980(?) games because of the (then) USSR's invasion into Afganastan. The stories of how these peoples lives came, basically, apart, was pretty moving. There lives had been focused on the Olympics for so many years, and then President Carter says "Don't go to the games" (which were in the USSR). People were devostated. Potential careers outside the Olypics in sports were lost forever. No body even remembers who they are now for doing such a thing.

Re:A damn shame!

[No Such Agency]

Reading those gymnasts web diaries really brought home the reality of the Olympics, and personally, finding out what motivates a 13 year old is very personally rewarding.

All sarcasm aside, I'd love to know how a 13-year-old feels about being at the Olympics! It might not be my top news story, but still could be interesting. And I'm not sure that the IOC should be restricting said 13-year-old from letting others read their personal writings about the experience, just because some US network wants "exclusive" rights to yakk on and on about how great Michael Johnson and company are and ignore every other country's athletes.

(Yes, I know there aren't supposed to be 13-year-olds at the games, I just said that for effect)

BBC silenced

[pyrotic]

Yup, the BBC has been asked to stop its news webcasts because there might be something about the Olympics. Details here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/europe/europet oday/index.shtml

Effect of Olympic Games on cities

[hwilker]

Check last week's (Sept. 16-23) Economist for an article about how hosting Olympic Games affects a city. (The web site has some free articles, but requires subscription otherwise. Can't provide a proper link - search for "Olympic games".) It seems as if L.A. 1984 was a financial success, Seoul 1988 were "national" games where the state invested heavily (so finances were no matter there) and Barcelona 1992 was a catastrophe. The article mentions somebody else as saying that the "jury is still out" on Atlanta, even though they tried to get a lot of non-public money.

I guess that if you want Other People's Money, these People will always try to influence what you do with Their Money.

Re:IP

[nagora]

I should have said "it's for playing DVDs", I admit. The point is that DeCSS is a (very) crap way of copying DVDs and that is not its purpose. No one would be stupid enough to use it for copying, it's only real use is for (ie, facilitating) playing.

A CD player is a vital piece of equipment for copying CDs, much moreso than DeCSS is for DVDs, but no one is trying to make them illegal, because they are for playing CDs.

TWW

IOC innocent compared to FIDE

[MotyaKatz]

FIDE - World Chess Federation has been doing things much worse than that. Led by president of Kalmykia (southern Russia part) Kirsan Ilumzhinov who has been suspected in numerous mafia-like actions and is in fact a typical dictator in his country. Ilumzhinov was elected when FIDE was wrecked by its previous president to immense financial debts which he mostly paid from his own (read Kalmykian) money. Kasparov, the World #1, calls him a gangster and boycotts FIDE events.

Now, Ilumzhinov tries to popularize chess in some inconventional ways, for example to allow chess to be an olympic event (it's a question whether it will be more honor to chess or to IOC) - and an exhibition chess match was played during these games in Sydney. Chess has its own Olympic games of glorious 75 years tradition, which are held every two years and attract above one hundred countries and one thousand participants, and the genre of a chess event is quite contrary to the genre and spirit of traditional olympic events - no noise, no close crowd, no bright photographing is allowed during chess games. Even the doping control has an entirely different meaning in chess!

Now, in order to establish a steadier income, FIDE went to an unprecedented move to change the copyright (C) of the chess games played. Prior to that the game moves - which are often extremely useful source of chess information bore no copyright and were generally widely available for everyone. FIDE stated that the players played the game hold the (C) to the moves and if they want they may disallow publishing of that game elsewhere without their permission and/or payment to them. This rule was almost never enforced though, as the chess players understand its ridiculousness...

Do geeks even watch the Olympics?

[Hairy_Potter]

I really haven't, I spent my free time this weekend browsing Slashdot, trying to setup PPP on my RedHat box, and measuring my rafters, since natural gas is gonna go way up, I'd better be prepared.

Did I spend any of this weekend watching a bunch of doped up genetic freaks from third rate countries prance around? Nope. Did many geeks? Probably not.

Maybe if these third rate countries would stop focusing on feeling good about themselves by winning medals in bicycling or something, adn start focusing on developing their technology, their GNPs would blossom, and the Olympics could go back to the amateurs, not the state sponsored pampered drug addled athletes.

Re:IOC Bans Spectators From Olympics

[ackthpt]

Anonymouse Reviewer: Worst Olympics, Ever!


It's all true! ±5%

Re:It's the proprietarization of thoughts.

[Danse]

Delete proprietary info from mind of an employee when he quits/is fired.

Reminds me of Snow Crash.

Just another dinosaur

[TheKodiak]

Ironically, the Olympics will disintegrate without the help of their ongoing battle to take their ball and go home with it. Witness their failure, despite spending millions on various logistics, to set the height of the vault correctly for the women's overall gymnastics competition, or even to question its height after a number of vaulters went way too high. Consider the huge amount of bad press they get for widespread corruption, that apparently isn't as welcome now as it was 4 years ago. The Olympics has always been about failing to live up to lofty ideals - and their ideals have never included free and easy access to information about the Olympics. They hold judo hostage so synchronized diving and amy van dyken spitting into a competitors lane will only be broadcast on the one true network.

I know open-source journalism doesn't quite work, these days, but I long for a day when an intelligent fan can bring me their play-by-play of an event I enjoy.

The Olympics claims it is the IOC's gift to the world, and for some reason, people buy it. Bleah.

Olympic blood donations in Sydney culled

[Firehawk]

Here in Sydney, the Red Cross got banned from advertising for its "Olympic blood donation campaign" as it expected supplies of donor blood to drop drastically as people went to the games.

The doctors over here in the Olympic Hospital joked that in response, they ought to ban I.O.C. members from receiving any Red Cross blood if they needed any ...

Re:Save Fatso The Wombat

[lpontiac]

Roy and H.G., who do the two hour wrapup on Channel 7 (the official Olympic channel right now) here in .au, don't seem to have run into any problems with Fatso. They have one of the little buggers sitting in front of them for the entire show.

media needs legislation

[Weh]

I think that the media/content companies need to be restricted by law. Just like big industries can't pollute the environment and have to see to it that their employees have a 'healthy' workspace. Likewise media companies should not be allowed to 'pollute' the 'public interest / cultural environment' and mistreat their 'employees' by taking away their free speech rights...

It's their perogative

[ShadyG]

As long as an athelete has voluntarily signed away his or her right to speak as a condition of participating, this is no different from a NDA between business partners. The IOC cannot prohibit those not involved with the organization from speaking about what they saw, but the athletes are kind of like employees. Just instead of being compensated with money, they get a chance to win medals and represent their country.

On the other hand, we can bring into question why it has to be this way. Why should the IOC have the authority to go to such lengths to protect its revenue stream? Business -- even non-profit business -- is one thing, but the Olympics are ostensibly about a goodwill meeting of nations and peoples in peaceful competition. It's not about property rights and revenue streams. Should we hold it up to an ideal? Or is it more realistic to accept its status as an organization that needs money to fund the events, activities, and workers involved in putting the games together?

-- ShadyG

This goes without saying...

[Steeltoe]

It was all games and sport, until someone started making money.

- Steeltoe

Far be it...

[Ron Harwood]

...for /. not to go the extra redundant mile for news coverage... ;)

Next on the butcher block(f crs thy wnt t cntrl t)

[ackthpt]

1: NBC is pissed that we, so sophisticated as we are, tune in on the internet or shortwave (yeah, it still exists!)
2: ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, whomever, recognize that the world has changed again and they just noticed it!
3: Broadcaster lobbies IOC to deny access to Olympics anyone who doesn't play by their exclusive rules
4: Heavy lobbying of the House or a sympathetic President results in blocking of foreign netcasts, surfing foreign pages, radio jamming, etc
5: We in the home of the free and land of the brave are, step by step, cut off from news and views of the world (which once we so celebrated when accessed by a student under a fascist regime like Iraq, Iran, North Korea or China)
6: Check for a sale on brown shirts and jack-boots in the officially sanctioned news paper
7: Practice your goose step and regurgitating whatever wisdom your betters have passed along to you

What has gone around eventually comes around.


It's all true! ±5%

Re:it most certainly is

[Stoutlimb]

I have to agree with you there! Then again, doesn't Coca-Cola (tm) make the selfsame claims? If more people realized how self-serving the IOC truly was, perhaps then people would have reason to make it otherwise.

Again, good to point that out.

There are sites which are covering the games

[smooc]

There is really no way for IOC the enforce this. I know a couple (1,2 of sites which are reporting about the games with background information (all the sites mentioned are Dutch btw, though both running copies of slashcode so you should feel at home :-) ). Our stories come from spectators which have close relationships to the athletes.

Honestly, how can you place something which is happening in public under copyright? It would be the same thing as the US copyrighting the Gulf-war.

Someone mentioned only 7% of the revenues is actively being used for covering the games. The rest goes to the developing countries. That's weird I did not know Belgium was a Third World country, yet they cant pay enough money for everything they want to cover. That really sux. The IOC might need to sponsor Belgium in addition as well then.

Some athletes row, others just do sports. Skøll

IOC Chief apparently isn't a nice guy

[cheeser]

here is a Suck article about the head of the IOC. It's Suck so it's a bit pessimistic by nature, but it's still not a flattering assessment.

Re:Bah.. screw mass trolling

[billcopc]

You people are so easily provoked.. i dare express my personal view on the olympics (albeit a very negative view) and your response is to insult me personally even though you have nothing to do with the olympics and can't even risk showing your true identity for fear of reprisal. Who cares if I can't hang stiffly from a set of suspended rings ? Neither can you, only I don't need to disguise my ineptitude simply because I think it's normal to not be excellent at everything and I don't need to fill myself with your airborne lies. If you're going to be assholes, at least be proud of it instead of being chicken.

Re:IP

[musique]

Of course that's nonsense, because I implicitly gave you the rights to make a copy of this article and read it when I posted it. But when I buy a DVD, I implicitly (should?) have the right to make a copy of it and view it too. That's what deCSS does. So why should it be illegal?

What I was referring to was the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which prohibits programs that circumvent copy protection and make copies of media. That is what makes this illegal. It subverts the copy protection, in this case encryption, and makes a copy. I didn't sit down and read deCSS, so it may not do this. I read a comment on /. that said that it made a 4GB MPEG file.

Don't get me wrong, DMCA is about the worse thing that has happened in IP in years, and companies are abusing copyright left and right. That does not change the fact that subverting copy protection is now illegal, due to the DMCA.

I just don't think that it is productive to be a media cracker and to fight these big companies. It is much better to stay in an open source environment on the software end, and to not purchase items, such as DVDs, that have such restrictive licenses. It is much better to either use CDs, analog media, or MP3s legally. This way, when we're at MP10, you can copy your CD or MP3 to an MP10 (or whatever the future holds). What I am talking about is listening to artists that do not have contracts with record companies, watching movies that are not produced by major film companies, go watch your local college play football, etc. If you starve big media companies of their revenue streams, then they will either have to change or disappear.

Re:Gymnastics IS a sport

[Sabalon]

Now, I'm not saying I'm not impressed by gymnastics, however it still comes down to a panel of judges going by what they see and how they feel it matches up with the criteria. Which means it is still up to a person to decide that this vault was better than that vault - that one landing looked more like it stuck than the other.

Re:Hell No!

[Kagenin]

WNBA Kicks Ass. You've obviously never even been to one of those skillfully played games that are commonplace among the WNBA.

Go Monarchs!

Kagenin

Not surprising.

[Anonymous Coward]

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

CUZ U HAVE NO FUCKING LIFE

[mholve]

fucking loser - get a life

Not a question of free speech..

[kabir]

No... Athletes are not being told that they may not freely express themselves, they are being told that they may not freely express themselves and participate in the games. It's a condition of competition, just like the no-drug requirement (which exists despite the fact that certain steroids, etc. might be legal in an Athlete's country of origin). It's not so much a law as a rule of the game.
--

Sounds like a job for...

[Geccoman]

Slashcode. Someone should put up a server running slashcode. People could post up event results and commentary. The only poll would be "How long do you think the IOC will let this web page exist?"

I call for a new Olympics!

[webrunner]

A bunch of athletes should get together and start the "Non-Sucky-World-Sporting-Events" (You can't call it Olympics because everyone knows IOC invented Ancient Greece)
----

IOC Bans Spectators From Olympics

[Saint Aardvark]

Sydney (AP) -- In a move that signalled a harsh clampdown on non-licensed coverage of the Olympic Games, the International Olympic Committee announced that it would be banning spectators from the Games themselves. The ban is to be put in place immediately.

"It's very simple," said an IOC spokeswoman. "The IOC has an obligation to fulfill the terms of its contracts. And when these spectators -- or 'coverage pirates' as we like to call them -- go home and talk to people about what they saw at the Games that day, they are providing unlicensed coverage -- coverage that should be coming exclusively from NBC. It's up to us to stop this."

She denied that the ban was overly fascistic. "Actually, we will be erecting giant television screens outside the Olympic Stadium, where people can watch licensed NBC coverage of the events inside. What more could people want?"

Free Software Foundation guru Richard M. Stallman could not be reached for comment. A source close to the programmer said he was "busy watching the 400 metre butterfly."

Streaming video

[nigelb0]

I sure can agree with the idea of people trying to stop streaming video (when it's available). But how can they? Surely it would similiar to someone taking a walkman into a pop concert trying to bootleg it.

Dear Mom and Dad...

[basilfawlty]

I know you really wanted to hear about my time in Sydney at the Olympic games, but there is a very big man with a nasty-looking rifle here to make sure I don't tell you about that.

You see, the International Olympics Committee makes all of its money selling the rights to the news and "official" sponsorships. I almost got my face on a McDonald's cup, but then they realized I wasn't in a popular or well-known sport. Oh, I'm supposed to tell you that the IOC treats us very well.

I'm sorry you won't get to see me, since my sport is Graeco-Roman wrestling. I'll have to tell you all about it when I get home. Oh, sorry. The very nasty-looking man with the big rifle just told me I probably don't want to do that, either. Well, you know how well I wrestle. I'm sure you can imagine it pretty well.

I hope to come home very soon. Oh. The nasty-looking rifle-man says, "Hi."

The IOC is the epitome of capitalist turpitude.

[AFCArchvile]

Funny how a "non-profit" organization is the first to receive this title.

The IOC has been doing everything in its power to bolster its bottom line. From accepting bribes to put the 2002 olympics in Utah, to making that inept moron of a journalist, Bob Costas, the sole source for fans to hear about the life of the olympic athletes. This is an Orwellian attempt to hide the real pain that is the Olympic bureaucracy.

Day 112- shot up with growth hormone again today..

[tenzig_112]

I wonder if that stupid IOC will ever catch me...

more stupid olympic coverage

www.ridiculopathy.com

Missed events...

[kabir]

Because of this sort of policy (not allowing rebroadcast/webcast/etc.) those of us who wish to follow lesser covered sports like fencing are pretty much SOL. There is no major network coverage of these sports available in the US, and since no-one can put up a web site I have to wait for the video tape from the hand-cam of my fencing instructor to arrive back in the states. It's extremely frustrating, and the IOC has left no recourse for enterprising individuals (short or exhorbitant shipping fees, I suppose) wishing to see lesser covered sports, or full coverage of a given event (NBS edits like you wouldn't belive!).

Grrrr.
--

$705M

[Sloppy]

Hmm.. that's pretty good money for exclusive rights to show something that has such a limited market, and they've got a great merchandising thing going too. Just my luck that they're privately traded and not on NYSE. (What? Non-profit? Surely this is someone's idea of a joke.) Is there any way to get a piece of this action? Or would I really to form a competing committee? I wonder if the word "olympics" is a trademark...

---

Re:$705M

[Pfhreakaz0id]

you damn right "olympics" is a trademark! They made a long-standing company in Norman, OK (USA) change it's name from "olympic village" to "athletic village" ...

Obviously, we've never had an olympics here. IIRC, we had some trials in Oklahoma City and that was when the IOC found out about this store and made them change it...
---

IP

[musique]

/. has been minimizing the role of Inetlectual Property in business and in open source.

In this case, the IOC is nuts to say that atheletes cannot keep diaries. They seem like a bunch of communists for doing that, but they're avoiding the Internet because they don't have a plan to use it. But, it is their right to control the flow of media from the game. They can't stop an American olympic athelete from writing about the experience later. And if they try, they're stupid.

/. is making itself look bad by attacking IP rights. When I heard about DeCSS, I thought it was a stupid case. Then I read a description of what the program does, and that is flat illegal, no matter what you say. It makes a copy of copyrighted material. The program would not be illegal if it weren't for DMCA, which is a very bad law, but it is now illegal. This does not justify other issues with the DeCSS case, such as tramping on the rights of journalists. If it were to pipe an MPEG video player, not logically going to the hard drive (i.e. only possibly going through virtual memory) then it would not be illegal because it would not "copy" the movie!

Given that it is IP rights that protect GPL'ed code, one must respect others IP rights by not taking illegal actions because one thinks it's okay. For example, Napster sold itself by saying that you could illegally copy songs by major artists. They made statements that said that you wouldn't find no-name artists on Napster. They show a lack of respect for copyright law, and have put themselves in a sticky situation.

/. should be careful about trivializing IP or it may find itself at the butt end of a lawsuit. Not to say that it is wrong to oppose oppresive laws and systems, but /. is becoming the "no IP" site. Without any IP, people would not be able to bring their creations to fruition and invention and innovation (not the MS kind, but the real kind) would stagnate and would be limited to small hobby projects.

Re:China analogy

[cetan]

They were called about by their president to boycott the games. It wasn't about idealism, it was about political pressure.

Remember the pre-Atlanta 'Olympic' hubub?

[vDiver]

Just before the Atlanta games, the IOC tried to get businesses in NW Washington state to change their names. Seems that the IOC feels that they own the term 'OLYMPIC' absolutely, even if you live and work in the Olympic mountain range. I guess we should be grateful that they didn't try to force us to change the name of the mountains...

quote

[vla1den]

"I.O.C. was not a United States agency and so was not bound by the First Amendment"
'nuf said

"Evil" is right -- Atlanta Games

[doodaddy]

I'll keep it short but I was in Atlanta going to school during the games. The committee did a sweep of local venues and closed down anything with a reference to the Olympics, or which had rings in it's logo - even though the city was sponsoring the games and putting lots of money into it. A decades old restaurant - The Olympiad (a pizza joint) was forced to change its name!!! The potential penalty was something ludicrous though I don't remember it now. The mayor was bribed. The schools were shut down to house the athletes so students were kicked out and had to find some place for the summer. (Studying is a pretty noble goal as well.) Several new stadiums were built under the promise (by city govt) that there would be a windfall of profits from the games. Not surpisingly, a follow up story never pointed out just how much was made.

Is nothing sacred?

[Christianfreak]

From the article:

Franklin Servan-Schreiber, the director of communications and new media for the International Olympic Committee, is keenly aware of the tension between property rights and unfettered coverage of the Games. But, he said, "I don't think the I.O.C. can be seen in any way limiting speech about the Olympics." He pointed out that 20,000 journalists are in Sydney - nearly twice as many media people as athletes, all free to cover the Games as they see fit.

Yeah right, this is such a ploy to make money. What do these journalists have to do before they can "freely" report on the Olympics? If they don't have to do anything then the IOC is shooting themselves in the foot with this statement, because anyone can be a journalist, even athletes that are there and therefore they are limiting speech.

Its quite obvious that they have no legal basis for that, but hey they are an "International organization that is dedicated to promoting peace by playing the Olympic games". Translating to: we can sue you in your courts but suing us would start and international incident and no one would let you do it.

THis is such BS, I guess its time for everyone to boycott the olympics.

Never knock on Death's door:

Decorpratization of Olympic Games

[Midnight Thunder]

Does anyone know of ay campign to decorporatize the olympic games and bring it back to what it really stands for?

The Olympics are Irrelevant anyway

[gavinhall]

Posted by polar_bear:

It's really odd to see the amount of hype that is being given to the olympics - especially given the collective yawn that people are giving them. It's a good example of the growing disconnect between media outlets and the public's interests. Of course, the multi-million dollar sponsors are pressing media outlets for more coverage since they're afraid of seeing their (wasted) investment go out the window.

Maybe people have finally woke up and realized that there's no point in watching endless hours of coverage of something that has absolutely no meaningful impact on their life...(notice the ratings for football are also down this year as well...)

I saw a poll on MSNBC, I think, that was about the low ratings and oddly enough none of the options were "no one cares" or "the olympics don't interest me" - they were all about time slots and that sort of thing, which leads me to believe that either they're trying to simply rig results that say "Oh, that's why ratings are low - because we're showing them on tape delay, not because no one really cares..." or they really can't fathom that the average American really doesn't care.

To address the topic at hand, though - it's ridiculous to say that participants can only communicate to the public through approved channels, but it looks like the atheletes are going to have to fight the IOC if they want to do so and still be allowed to play. Of course, by the time the IOC gets done getting rid of the olympians who are using dope and the ones who are doing diaries they won't need to have the games anyway!

it most certainly is

[ChristTrekker]

But that's not right. Making exercise of rights dependent on some other condition, or making some action dependent on exercise of rights, is totally wrong!

• "Sure you can vote...if your grand-daddy could in 1860."
• "Sure we'll let you in here...but you better not vote next month, or something bad might happen to you."

This is wrong, wrong, wrong!

Re:it most certainly is

[Stoutlimb]

In any contract, people are giving up some freedom, for a reward.

An athlete gets to participate in the Olympics, and possibly get corporate sponsorship (commercials), plus the possibility of winning a medal, something of value. Just being seen in the Olympics is something of value! In exchange, they agree to play by the rules the IOC sets out, therby giving up some freedoms. Fair exchange.

An employee gets a paycheque, and agrees to give up some freedoms (such as their time and freedom of association, and some freedom of speech like NDA's.) Fair exchange.

What part of this don't you understand? Nobody's forcing anyone into doing anything. The athletes bound themselves into contracts of their own free will. You've been reading too much Karl Marx and Lenin for your own good.

Bleh! You give up something, in exchange for something else! Why don't some slashdotters understand the fundamental principle of contrats unless it's the GPL?

Lenin and Marx were wrong, give it a rest!

IOC Funding

[Tram]

First, let me say that I don't agree with the IOC position. I feel that their restrictions on the athletes are unfair, and their fears unfounded. However, before we all start accusing them of being evil, it may help to know where all that money is going. According to the IOC, less than 7% of revenue is used for operating costs. The rest of the money goes to cover the organization of the games(OCOG), the NOC, which helps fund the training equipment for athletes...especially in countries that can't afford it, and sport organizations. So, before we jump on the IOC for being evil, wouldn't it help to know where that money actually goes?

What the IOC represents...

[Sabalon]

The aggressive enforcement effort, he said, is meant to ensure that "the association between the athlete, the sport, the values and the symbol that represents all this is clear."

A pretty dangerous quote for an IOC official - or at least one with quite a big opening for ridicule. I think that pretty much everyone believes what the symbol represents - greed and corruption.

I am surprised that the atheletes signed such a contract. I'm even more surprised that they had to sign such a contract. "Yes, come represent your country. However, any thing you experience during the games is our property." I wonder if the atheletes that have the video cameras during the opening ceremony have to sign something special to carry them in. Perhaps they have to pay the IOC before showing them to their family.

The IOC paints themself as so holy and so committed to the spirit of the games. However, if you go to an event, you can not wear an outfit that has a visible logo on it for fear that someone who hasn't paid a shitload of money may accidently get free advertising if that shirt shows up in a photo. No problem with the atheletes all wearing their Nike logo uniforms.

Or perhaps I'm pissed of the lack of soccer and fencing coverage, and the majority of coverage going to "non-sports" (gymnastics, synchroized this and that. Basically anything that you can not use a length, height, time, etc... to judge a winner.) So part of my beef is with how pathetic NBC is.

Off topic, but..

[technos]

These rules may include things like saying that all football games follow FIFA rules

Who else would love to see the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers have a go at each other playing the standard FIFA rules?

Re:Off topic, but..

[Wah]

that'd mess things up, seriously. Kickers might even start to get some respect.
--

I would like to tell what I think...

[ralmeida]

...about all this. But I can't, because I am an olympic athlete at Sidney.

--

Quote of the Day

[Erasmus Darwin]

From the article:
"I don't think the I.O.C. can be seen in any way limiting speech about the Olympics."

I think that quote succinctly sums up the IOC's total detatchment from reality. It reminds me of a Big Brotherish double-speak where claiming the total absence of a transgression makes it so.

Dismantle the IOC

[Keel]

I think it's about time the IOC was dismantled and replaced with an international Board of Directors whose members are individuals representing a broad group of interests.

IOC and all the $$$

[phanophish]

What really concerns me is the IOC claims they do not have money for extensive drug testing of atheletes, but they bring in millions in cash for endorsments and being the official everything of the olympics. The olympics are under threat of loosing their "pristine" image that makes them great. Soon they will have as much respect as the WWF (No flames you WWF lovers) has in professional sports.

Not the only thing

[alhaz]

Security guards have reportedly been confiscating cocacola products. It seems Pepsi is the official soft drink of the 2000 olympics, and someone thinks "official" ought to mean "the only thing allowed".

Also, a food vendor that was selling an item with egg and ham was booted because it sounded too much like an egg mc muffin.

The IOC is getting way out of hand. I live in Utah, so I've heard all the bad there is to hear about the SLOC-IOC scandals. I'm embarrased that we even wanted the winter olympics here. I'm planning to be on vacation out of state when they happen.

They might not even have to totally stop interview

[namespan]

Your idea is a good one; if enough of the athletes did this together, it'd certainly get folks to take notice.

It seems, however, a bit of a longshot to get everyone involved. Even everyone from one country. Especially countries that don't prize free speech the way the US does.

But if all the athletes mentioned the ban, and their disfavor towards it, that might even be enough.

This could be over-turned on one condition

[Midnight Thunder]

I can understand that the IOC wants to protect their revenue stream. From what I can tell in the article the athletes would probably be making money from publishing their diaries and thus could be considered as journalists and if allowed could create a whole bunch of loop-holes that would be a nightmare to patch. At the same time if an athlete publish the journal not-for-profit, on their own website or on the website of the IOC, then I reckon that they should be allowed to publish.

Corporate Rights are BS

[SubtleNuance]

we're talking about Olympic athletes using their prominence within the Olympics to make a quick buck by promoting messages contrary to the message the IOC has ordained.

Why is it that the recently corporatist controlled Olympics are allowed to influence the opinions and actions of the athletes? Olympic athletes participate because they are exceptional. They are not allowed to participate, it is their right! If the IOC isnt capable of upholding the responsibility to serve the planet and provide an NON-PARTISAN Olympics, then their mandate to do so is revoked. How do I, what authority gives me this right? I AM A CITIZEN OF THIS PLANET AND -I- OWN THE OLYMPICS Yes that's right - It is me, and you and every athlete. It is not for the IOC Inc. to decide when we can and cannot use the '5 rings logo'. or anything else - not allowing athletes to post their weblogs (etc) and having 'exclusivity' arrangements w/ a the Mega-Media-Soma-Company is contrary to the ideals of the Olympics.

somehow, because we're talking about corporations battling individuals and not corporations merely battling each other, this has changed? Think carefully and reflect on your own hypocrisy, and you may come to the correct view.

Here is a news flash: Corporations are not people. They have managed to corrupt your American democracy so much, to spoil your culture from what was originally a shinning beacon of freedom to the most thoroughly disgusting collection of law and governance on the planet. Bar none. In 1886, a California Court ruled that a corporation was a 'natural person' (Santa Clara County v Southern Pacific Railroad), until someone in the US realizes that CITIZENS have rights, not CORPORATE PARASITES, you will continue to loose your liberty and rights. The IOC Inc, RIAA, MPAA, DMCA, The Republicrates (GoreBush), et al will continue to assure the rights of the corporation are more important than the rights of the citizen. Wake up.

Re:Of any sports event, the Olympics should be ope

[Badgerman]

Sadly, the Olympic Games ARE "just a commercial event" at this point. Overblown, overcommercialized, and mired in politics, legal weirdness, and questions of bribery.

And now, this. Now the communications of those participating, those contributing, those we want to see and hear of, are limited. The IOC is now in the same category as the RIAA in my book - people busy ignoring those doing the work and snatching up as much intellectual property as possible.

Bah.. screw mass commercialism

[billcopc]

What's so interesting about a bunch of brainwashed goons jumping and splashing all over the place in a futile effort to gather tiny slabs of rare metal ?

"So you've been doing gymnastics since you were 6 months old ? Good for you. Run along now."

People train for years just for a crack at the olympics. Haven't they ever heard of getting a job ? Or are they too simple-minded to do so ? Instead they perpetuate this age-old olympic crap that's been wasting billions every year. Sports are fine, REAL sports.. not this "Look at me! I can balance from two rings 10 feet above the ground with my legs perfectly horizontal" bullshit. Give me some hard-hitting fast-moving hockey!

Dude, yer gonna miss out on the fun!

[Randy Rathbun]

I don't know if you heard about the Australian guy back in the 50's when the Olympics were in OZ: A 17 year old kid made a fake torch out of a stick and a tin can, put on his torch carrier outfit, and started running. The police saw him, and escorted him to city hall, where the Mayor was waiting. Mayor finishes up his speech, everyone starts to leave, then the real torch arrives.

It is stuff like this that can make the games in your town fun! Ya got two years to work on a prank - I sure would if they were here where I am.

Vote Nader

Simple Solution

[dman123]

The article (yes, I read it) clearly stated that official journalists were not denied access or reporting on the events, so here's a simple solution...

An athlete gives his or her diary (oral or written) to an "official" journalist. The journalist then rewrites it in 3rd person format and sends it into the athlete's hometown newspaper. Done. Not difficult at all.

--
dman123 forever!

Re:IOC non-profit? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[.sig]

heh, I wish I was deluded, but unfortunately I'm about as cynical as they come.
However, corruption and for-profit organization are two different things. We live in a world where everything involving money is corrupt in some way or another. (Exceot microsoft. We all know Bill Gates, AKA G-Man, is a saint....)
What I was talking about was the IOC as a whole, not the indivuals who are living off of it. If they lost their 'legitimate' income, we'd be hard pressed to even have the olympics, unless they start charging an exorbinant entrance fee, basically limiting the possible participants to the handfull of countries with a GDP of more than 3 figures, or they go back to the old days (circa 1000 BC), when the only events are the most basic. I really doubt they'd support the olympics with money from under the table deals, bribes, etc.
As with just about all organizations, the IOC is a pretty decent idea, which would benefit greatly from some (violent) pruning of the upper 99% of it's leadership.

IOC USA Members Addresses

[namespan]

OK, so here's some IOC US Members Addresses.
If you're displeased enough to actually write
a physical letter, and able to be articulate,
maybe you should use these. Please folks, don't
turn the flame level up high unless you do it
subtly. And nothing so immature as hacking or
death threats, please.

Oh. International slashdot readership. Haven't forgotten you, but I can't duplicate the whole list. Find it here.
---------------------------------
James L. Easton

7855 Haskell Avenue, Suite 202
Van Nuys CA 91406-1999
USA
---------------------------------
Anita L. DeFrantz
c/ o Amateur Athletic Foundation
2141 West Adams Boulevard
Los Angeles California 90018
United States of America.
---------------------------------
Robert Ctvrtlik is a US IOC rep, but
doesn't have an address listed.