Slashdot Mirror
Net Faces 10 -Year Olympic Shutout
Noel Carroll writes: "The BBC reports that 'Websites will be banned from using or showing video clips of Olympic events for the next decade. The restriction, which is being imposed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), is designed to protect the substantial investments made by national broadcasters who do not want their television and radio audiences undermined by internet coverage.'"
I think the what they are trying to accomplish is to keep the investors that they have, i.e. the people who are paying for the right to broadcast the olympic events. If you aren't paying for the right, you can't show it (unless you can prove that you can follow that rule about region). Less and less people are watching the olympics. Certain events still draw large crowds, and that is what the news agencies pander to. Unfortunately, for the events that are not a popular, the one of the ways to find out about it and see some of the action is the web (or stay up really late and hope to catch clips on ESPN). What the IOC should realize is that the web is a good medium for increasing the popularity and viewing of some of these 'less popular' events.
Eric Gearman
--
Atomic batteries to power! Turbines to speed!
A billion times zero is still zero.
Hey, sounds an awful lot like the music companies!
TheGeek
TheGeek
http://www.geekrights.org
Kill the monkey
There is a story...I *really* wish i could think of the name of it.... takes place in the future,in this communist society like place. This guy re-discoveres electricity, but when he takes it to the rulers, they wo'nt accept it because of all the candle makers they will put out of bussiness. They had just gone to candles from torches one hundred years before and don't want to change again so soon.
The scary part is....things like this happen!
God was my copilot, but then we crashed on the top of a mountain and i had to eat him...
What is it about ? The almighty Buck or Freedom Of Speech ? :
Anyway even though I don't follow such events I am quite annoyed by this announce.
but now, look closer to it
how can they ensure it won't be broadcasted on the Internet ?
No way.
--
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Television broadcasting companies are already planning to take over the net as the broadband user base expands. What happens in four years when cablemodem and DSL are everywhere (Not to mention much faster than now.), fiber connections are making inroads to the home, and Microsoft releases new versions of Media Player that won't allow desktop users to fast forward past commercials embedded in video clips (If you think that will not happen, try to skip that FBI warning before a DVD.)?
This ruling is a joke. It might last until the next winter Olympics, bit in 2004 the Olympics WILL be on the web in video format.
All I can say to this is "Thank Bob for the CBC!":)
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
If I recall correctly, the athletes do have to agree to certain terms and conditions in order to participate. This year, that agreement precluded the athletes from selling their own diaries to the media, although apparently the IOC wasn't very strict in enforcing that rule.
The broadcasters will have finally caught up with others. Then they'd say, "let the game be on the net too, but our web sites still have the exclusive rights!"
Let's hope by then the existing net broadcasters would have even better technology, or have already established firm brand names.
I think that the cold war stuff does have some factor in the lower ratings, but there are other parts too that just bugged the fsck out of me, and a lot of the other people I knew. First off, all the commercials they had so that they could recoup the billions spent buying the rights to the games bugged me to no extent, the idiotic tape delay they had so that they could fail miserably trying to cram fifty events into three hours. Secondly, the blather of the announcers in some of the sports was just too much. We've got great announcers out there in these fields, why not hire them instead of the yahoos they used. Finally, the fact that they didn't allow any net coverage factored ever so slightly into the lowered numbers.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
why did you get modded down twice?!?! That clip was painful... funny... but painful.
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I take no responsibility for any spelling mistakes in the above post.
Wait a damned minute.
Baseball has dozens of corporate tie-ins. Yet I see coverage in the newspaper, on several different TV channels, and on the net.
Football has many different companies paying rights to plaster their image all over every goddamned thing at the stadium, yet I can still go to sportsline.com and get the updates while I'm at work (fine, sportsline is a part of cbs, then I can go to a different site as well).
Etc, etc, etc. The point is that these are sports people want to watch, and the internet outlets (along with other media) set out to inform people about them. Then along comes the olympics with its:
All in all, I care neither way. Let the stupid Olympics crumble. I would be much more interested in watching a World Championship of Track and Field (which is essentially what the original Olympics were about), than see who gets the gold in Shopping, Ping-Pong, Outer Space Street Fighter II Turbo, Water Polo, or MP3 Downloading (whoa, RIAA vs. Olympic committee: I would pay to see that fight).
"What we elect to call imagination is mere combination of things not heretofore combined." - Frank Norris
I can draw a parallel with the huge flow of music lovers who are using Napster. The framework of paying $20 for music pressed on a $1 CD was bound to create a backlash for the industry, hence the millions of happy Napster users and the current turmoil. I would love to see the Olympics on the internet if for nothing else than to be able to view what I want to view. Like with Napster (hopefully), everyone can be happy eventually as long as revenues are in the end collected and directed to the appropriate channels. I wouldn't mind seeing an advertising banner while I'm watching the Olympics online if that was what was needed. But leaving the coverage to fat-cat broadcast companies is monopolistic behavior at its worst.
Hey, I didn't mean to knock wrestling. I watch wrestling almost every night. They have the "fun" part of entertainment figured out. And I've purchased quite a few pay-per-view wrestling events. But, even as an avid fan, I have to say that "intelligence" is not one of the things that TV wrestling is about. That's one of the prime reasons I like it. It's nice to occassionally shut down your brain and just enjoy something that is purely "fun". The Olympics on the other hand, are not fun at all.
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"Unless and until you can guarantee your internet signal is only available within your territory, you cannot put video on your website," he said. "We're going to go forward with that and we're going to see how it evolves."
First I've never actually heard anyone refer to a net 'signal' before in my life. Sounds like he hasn't clue[0] in his head about how the Internet actually works. Although engineering a solution for this seems possible, why would anyone ever want to invest in limiting technologies?? It defeats the entire purpose of the Net.
He says "We're going forward with that", but he isn't. He's going backwards, back to the days when BBS ruled the earth and Fido still roamed the planet. We may live in a global village, but it has become glaringly obvious that one can not cross the street with information without breaking a slew of local, national, and international laws.
Oh no! If this trend keeps up, before long the Internet with be nothing but a bunch of boring scientific research projects, software development groups and device driver downloads!! Oh, NOooo!!!
People will continute to shop in real stores, spammers will give up and folks will have to go to pubs to socialize. What'll we do, what'll we DO?!?!
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I posted here a little while ago, then i couldnt get to the site, now the comment has gone! Gone forever!
I agree - in fact, I would be willing to bet $100 bucks that if they actually make this decision, they will change their minds and reverse it within 5 years. In less than 3 years it will be obvious to everyone that it was the wrong thing to do.
Why? Two related reasons. First: Soon, TV will commonly delivered over IP. The lines between TV and the Internet are going to start blurring. Next generation set top boxes that pull MPEG-2 video straight off IP multicast over DSL and cablemodems are already out there, making money.
That will enable stage 2: a world where there will be services like Napster for TV - imagine being able to access a gigantic on line library of TV content - watch any episode of X-Files or the Simpsons, whenever you want!
And it will be legal, but probably not free. For example, I quit watching TV two years ago. I can't stand the ads, and having watch my favorite shows only when the network decides they should be scheduled. Everyone who is used to the web will want TV to be the same - A flat fee for access, and then watch what you want, when you want. (TIVO is a step in the right direction).
The IOC thinks they will get more money by locking out competition to the current broadcasters. How foolish!
Soon, the broadcasters with the money will be the ones that provide people with exactly what they want. The world the IOC and the big networks know is going bye-bye.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
Hmm.
;-)" it and send it out on Napster and Gnutella. Oh, and don't forget those that will create hexadecimal dumps of the movies' content in text and print those on t-shirt with "The IOC can suck my dI0Ck" on the back.
The IOC bans websites from using or showing video clips, the story hits Slashdot and now free-speach advocates are getting crazy shouting that it's an infrigment of their Nature-given right to watch an event which is, by the way, international.
You know what happens next - kids with video capture cards start recording every bit of Olympic activity they can, "DivX
C'mon, it' s pretty obvious that the IOC has learned a less on from the De-CSS episode and is seeking to improve the rating for a pretty much dying event.
I can see it already: thousands of kiddies all watching Curling just to see what the fuss is all about.
Not bad, IOC. Not bad.
[Check out this other Jesus-powered IOC]
Greg
Loopsh of fury.
The Olympics is not about athletics. I finally realized that when I went to Atlanta in '96 and witnessed the gross over-commercialization first hand. My wife and I shelled out over $200 for a pair of tickets to a SOLD-OUT rhythmic gymnastics event. When we got there, the venue never filled beyond 1/4 full. Apparently, more than 3/4 of all the tickets had been given away to sponsers that either never handed out the tickets or gave them to people that could care less about the sport. When the event started the announcer encouraged everyone to move down and fill in the empty seats. The network did not want their advertisers to think that the event did not draw interest.
The IOC is about money and power, not athletics. The athletes are exploited and don't even realize it.
I feel the same way about the ISO and 'open' standards that you have to pay money for, but that's another topic.
>But with one day to go, the latest estimate is 15 million.
If only someone were to post the link on Slashdot! Sadly the article is 2 months old, though, so the time limit has passed.
>The head of the marketing division and IOC vice president, Dick Pound...
I see the IOC was wise enough to choose a marketing VP with a safe, ordinary name wherein no-one could possibly find any innuendo. I wonder what his hobbies are?
>The IOC classifies it as a broadcasting medium...
Surely that's up to lawmakers. Or does the IOC now have global jurisdiction over copyright law?
>Part of the problem for the IOC is that the place of the internet has yet to be accurately defined.
No problem. The Committee can use its new-found legal powers to define the place of the Internet as 23 degrees 4 minutes south, 12 degrees 18 minutes east.
>There was also pressure for a ban on pictures on the internet from the American broadcaster, NBC...
Yes, I can see the world's governments banning Olympic coverage. Anything to please the all-important NBC.
>NBC's controversial decision to show no live pictures and delay its coverage by 18 hours has led to lower viewing figures than expected.
All-important and wise with it.
Seriously, it sounds like the IOC intends to suppress fair use of Olympic clips in reviews. They may have the right to exclude unauthorised cameras from their sites, but they can't rewrite the law. Or perhaps Harry Peart was glossing rather heavily over the legal situation.
Ask me if I've been required to disclose any crypto keys.
At some level this is nothing new. All professional sporting events in the US are all prefaced by a little statement that any recording or broadcasting of the event without the express written consent of whatever association runs the sport (NFL, NHL, NBA, etc.) is a crime.
I believe that the right of Fair Use still overrides these messages. If I want to post the latest score or write a review of my experiences at the last baseball game, they don't have a leg to stand on legally. Even if I post screenshots from the broadcast or possibly even short movie excerpts - the copyright laws allow limit reproduction. What they do have in their favour is a large selection of lawyers to send cease-and-desist demands around - does anyone here actually run an opensource sports news site? Have they had any grief?
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Damn good point. I'd toss all the bullshit ceremonies in favor of making it more legit and offering a chance to a few thousand more athletes.
Nonperiodic Central Trajectory
And don't forget how the Christians bombed the Olympic park in Atlanta.
d ol ph.htm
http://www.fbi.gov/mostwant/topten/fugitives/ru
"The Arabs" refers to a race of people. To hold the race accountable for the murders in Munich in 1972 is ignorant and offensive.
-Bruce
The Olympics were created to be a goodwill competition between the countries of the world. I think the US created the amateur only rule for it's atheletes. However, in this day and age, everything involving the media networks is about how much money they can make!
42
The Olympic games are nothing more than a two week long commercial anyway. The only true sport left is the race to see who can grab the most market share. The one with the most $$$ when the whistle blows wins. It wouldn't matter to me if the were exclusively broadcast on the net -- I still wouldn't watch. The way I see it, that's less bandwidth being drained away on useless content.
If there was a true, positive, lasting impact on the world as a result of all the money grabbing, I would reconsider my opinion. But, alas, this isn't the case. The economics just don't trickle down. There are no long-term, well paying jobs created in the cities hosting the games and the licensing arangements are setup to bleed as much out of the fans as possible while providing as much of a tax break as possible to the sponsors (how else can a city win it's bid to host the games) so all that is left when the games are over is one huge mess to clean up. And don't forget to add the fact that every single terrorist orginization out there just drools over the chance to blow something up during a world-wide broadcast event. I just fail to see the positive in it all.
As the Simpson's so aptly pointed out, look at all the wonderful things the Olympics did for Sarayevo.
OIC is tring to hold on tight to anything the smells like the olympics that they will shot themselves in the foot in the next few years.
Yes, the Aussies did a spectacular job. The people were enthusiastic about all the athletes instead of just their own, the logo and celebrations were tasteful yet modern (blasted difficult to pull off nowadays), and the events were fun to watch (unless you were stuck with NBC).
The organizers, or the IOC, whoever handled marketing and licensing, whored out the Olympic name to anyone who could pony up the cash. Come on, tossing away spectators' own food and drinks after they paid wads of $Aus to see the events just because it didn't have the right label? What a pile of crap. I bet the ancient Greeks are wishing they could come back from Elysium to shove spears through the entire IOC. Quite frankly, I'd like to help them.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
What's the problem here? They're not suggesting that some national TV coverage is better/more inclusive/less biased than others, are they?
If that were to be the case (like as born out by the facts) why shoudn't I be able to watch it on the network providing the coverage I require.
The requisite 2 meter satellite dish and motor I would need to receive Norwegian TV would topple by mobile home, however the Fat Pipe of DSL keeps me rooted to the ground. I know how I'd prefer to receive my programming.
Hehehe... he said,
help fund athletes from poorer countries
Okay, obviously you've been listening to the Olympic folks. They make a big to-do about some of the projects where they throw their nickels and dimes. The large picture is quite different. The IOC has been continuously thinning out the ranks of the athletes; such aid as they give to athletes from poorer countries is simply for PR purposes, to keep those countries from going wholly unrepresented.
While they've been adding sports, the IOC has cut back events, weight classes, and numbers of participants across the boards, in order to minimize the number of participants in any given sport. When you think about it, it makes sense: the media is only going to cover a little bit of any given sport, and having depth beyond that is expensive and wasteful from a commercial standpoint. One of the other strategies they've used is to require countries to qualify athletes. The problem is, left unchecked these measures would pretty well guarantee that some countries would have no athletes in the games.
So they make allowances for underrepresented countries, and they run some provisional programs to try to bring the athletes from these countries to the point where they don't look like fools in the Games.
Naturally, these programs are nice, too, when they're talking to IBM or UPS and trying to get funding. So they make sure that their media partners, during the Olympic year when the IOC and USOC gets 90% of their sponsorship, paint a picture in which the wealth generated by the Olympics is used primarily for charitable causes. Bunk. They've got better uses for their money. And FYI, there were more athletes from poor countries participating in 1976, when each country had a *right* to send a representative in each sport.
If you force the television networks to compete with the internet
Now that's an interesting turn of phrase. If you have free speech, you're forcing people to compete. Geez, sounds downright nasty. Perhaps you're right; maybe we should protect the television networks from this brutal use of force by strongly encouraging everyone else to keep their traps shut.
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
What's that about mobile phones? They're going to police all phone discussions about the Olympics unless the caller can prove that the callee is in the same country??
Can they do that??
Corollary to Moore's Law: The IQ of new computer owners is declining.
People bitch and moan about MS being a monopoly, well methinks they and the IOC have studied together. What in the hell does the IOC do with all that money? Do they help the hosting city build the stadiums and such? Ok, those medals probably do cost a few buck each... But still, that would be a sweet job.
OpenSource the Olympics! (in case you have not heard ENOUGH about OpenSource)
tinfoilmedia
Exactly how do they plan to stop a few million half-way technically literate types who can pull footage from television broadcast and reformat it as video-clips? I can imagine some really draconian nonsense coming down to try to enforce such contracts.
What is wrong with the media companies? Don't they realize that they could gather coverage of all events live and charge for DVDs of it or better yet for random access rights? If they want to claim monopoly rights to the content then they can at least be bothered to have reasonably full and flexible content. Oh, I forgot, they have a monopoly so they don't have to be reasonable. BAH!
In other words, to secure Bill Costas' job for the next ten years as the official heckler of Olympic athletes. Gee, I wonder how much NBC "funding" the IOC is receiving right now.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
That the IOC picks a place that won't go over well from a local marketing/gladhandling perspective or that they expect they local gov't to suspend laws just to appease them? I agree that SLC should not change any laws for the event but you have to wonder what the IOC was thinking when they try to put a corporate love-fest in a place where The Official Beer of the Olympics can't be easily purchased, ne'st pa?
...the lack of respect that online media really gets. Maybe respect is a bad choice of words but it's Monday so I'll explain:
While it is true that online publications are the minority, their contribution to the journalism "scene" seems to be minimized by traditional journalists who are afraid because anyone with just a AOL account (and 2 free megs of hosted space) can get as much attention as the NY Times. Decentralization of content publication is as worrysome to traditional print media as Napster is to the record labels. Anyone else see the parallels between RIAA v Napster and Mattel v That Guy Who Criticized Them On His Web Page? Anyway, The IOC doesn't see any online rags (not counting ABC, CNN, MSNBC and other traditional news franchises) as reputable, established news sources. I just hope in 10 years this conclusion comes back to bite them in the ass... we can all guess at how everything will change by then.
"Me Ted"
BOSTON SUCKS!
I'm sure we'll eventually see region-encoding for websites anyway. Uncensored access to information is too dangerous to last.
"Saddam Hussein cavorts with terrorists."
From the Olympic Charter:
The goal of the Olympic Movement is to contribute to
building a peaceful and better world by educating youth
through sport practised without discrimination of any
kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual
understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity
and fair play.
Apparently, discrimination doesn't include websites...
>SLC is only 50% mormon.
The other 50% live in Mesa AZ.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I'm not sure I understand.
If someone sends me an email, and I feel that I need to share it with the world, then YES, I feel morally justified in doing so. Just as I can publish a letter you wrote me, or repeat a conversation you sent me, or (in my country anyway) record a conversation we had in person, even if you don't know about it. Unless terms discussing the fact that this was to be kept private were discussed, you have *NOTHING* to bitch about.
Maybe we could pull a 'UTAH' and offer some female companionship to pursuade them otherwise.
a/s/l here. Sorry, adding domain tags to your s
Germany, Japan... and the US... It'd be dominated by maybe three countries, but suddenly I'm feeling Olympic Battlebots!!! *ahem*
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
Lausanne, Switzerland-- In a move sure to attract attention from both national and international regulators, the IOC (International Olympic Committee) announced plans to merge its governing board with that of ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
The announced merger set off a field of protests from other organizations seeking to offend the largest user base possible, including the MPAA and Microsoft. The RIAA announced plans to either block the merger or join it.
"This merger would create a virtual Internet monopoly in the rapidly growing field of organizations seeking to disgust their own audience" said Jane Regalia of Microsoft Corporation (MSFT). "This is an area we feel very passionate about-- Microsoft will defend to its utmost the ability to inconvenience and annoy its customers."
"Oh yeah-- innovate, innovate, innovate," she added.
Prominant members of both ICANN and IOC were unimpressed with protests against the Internet mega-merger.
"Look, we're not in the business of looking out for users of the Internet," said Jason Henkleson, Chairman of the ICANN At-large Members Dispowerment subcommittee. "I mean, if we were looking out for everyday Internet citizens, we'd be pretty inept, right?"
IOC Chairman Juan Antonio Samaranch, speaking from his palatial half-mile yacht modeled after the more modest Queen Elizabeth II, said, "whatever."
"By the way, you can't print that on the Internet," he added.
Who is RTFM and when will he help me with Unix?
This article mentioned nothing of enforcement, and I have been speculating that there is nothing they can do to prevent it, aside from stating that it is not allowed. Anyone know anything else on this one?
-EnDough
Ok I can understand giving restricted access to one TV network. The Olympics needs the money to help sponsor the poorer countries. Having said that, I don't see why the entire Internet is blocked. Shouldn't the TV Network at least be aloud to broadcast over the Internet?
I was disappointed that network stations' websites weren't doing that during the last Olympics. It would have been nice to click on the athlete and watch them.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
This is just about the most pretentious thing I've ever seen posted on /. Kiss-the-blade indeed. *snort*
--alex
If you force the television networks to compete with the internet, you are going to create a competitive market that results in less money to support the games.
Oh no! You mean subject the Olympics to the forces of unbridled capitalism instead of running them under the current system of corporate ogliarchy and corrupt government cronyism? THE HORROR, THE HORR-oh, wait, they already are subjected to the forces of "unbridled capitalism". Silly me, here I was thinking about that pesky "free market" garbage again..
biya
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----- The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they will be when you kill them.
Call it...Tivotella
cat
Why couldn't I attend an event (rowing!) and use my digital camera with 6 GB of disk do make mpegs of the event to slap on the distributed web. With no single point of distribution, have they proven that they can stop you? Imagine, no commentary from idiot commentators!... just a dedicated fan... one who knows the sport and can give the best commentary.
As someone who owns a television, but uses it only for movies, not broadcasts, keeping the olympics off of the net really hurts. I've opted to use the Real player for broadcast news, and I read many news sites. How many other people are doing this?
I have the broadcast rights to the revolution. The revolution will NOT be televised. -J
I would go to the websites that covered the events I was interrested in, and avoid the events I didn't care about.
Troy Davidson
"If I could wave my magic wand. I'd make everything alright."
I'm not sure I understand their reasoning. Seems like most other sporting organizations realize that web sites generate more interest in events rather than undermine the audience for those events.
Gee, get a VCR.. It fixes both of those problems :).
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
what so now even fewer people will watch the olympics.
A blog about stuff.
So basically, the Olypics are like the RIAA that didn't cry wolf?
Well, tough snuff. That's like saying we must ban automobiles, since that will put horse and carriage makers out of business. Or that lightbulbs will ruin the candle industry.
My heart feels for you.. It really does.
Ok. So lets be sympathetic for a minute. We currently have a system that *cough* *cough* works. We have mega product producer who pays top dollar for add space. We then have even more-mega-media-maker that buys air-time (and cyphins off coverage to many of the individual ads). A lot of this money gets funnelled into the Olympics, which eventually trickles money down to the non-economic powerhouse countries..... Soooo How did the Greeks do it without TV? Damn, that's a tough one.
-Michael
-Michael
Is anyone else getting as sick a freakin tired of the big business media groups being able to wield such threatening control over everything? This is /*SO*/ annoying.
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I take no responsibility for any spelling mistakes in the above post.
What I'd like to see when the games come back around is a beowulf cluster of tv tuners plugged on every possible olypic stream in the world, retransmitting it all over the net. We (in the broad sense) need to gather and build something huge, something that blows the 'official' media outlets out of the water, providing live video and commentary, as well as up-to-the-minute stats and rankings, to show the IOC what a foolish decision they've made. I personally don't give a fnarg's ass about the olympics. Hypercommercial clownery that encourages brainwashed high-performance meatheads isn't exactly my interpretation of entertainment, especially when their feats and prowesses have nothing to do with normal human activity and survival. Pole vaulting isn't exactly something you'd do outside the scope of olympic competition. My 2 canadian cents.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Sounds like the decision to remove all films shown on the net before the box office from the competition for academy awards.
I am !amused.
What do you mean? I know I'm being the devil's advocate here, but look...
You can't take pictures at the movie theater, or at lots of concerts, or some museums.. the list goes on. IS that the company in charge exercising 'too much control'? No. It's not.
The olympics is different how? It's not a public exhibition.. they aren't 'outlawing' olympic pictures.. they are simply not giving license for web broadcasters to get the media they need.
ANd the only reason they can do this is because it's what other broadcasters want. Traditinal media *wants* the olympic viewers.
And belive me, when they lose enough viewers over the next few years to the net, things will change.
Sure, they have an interest in protecting the broadcasters, but to decide to close for the next 10 years a content delivery system that has been open for less than ten years is an incredibly short-sighted move. To put it plainly, they have no clue what the net will look like in 3, 5, 8 years. Not even this crowd has perfect foresight. Of course, now that they've pledged that, it will probably go into upcoming contracts, and then they'll be bound by it. I think they'll really regret this move.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
aphr0 reports that Slashdot will be banned from posting anything by Jon Katz for the next decade. (or however long funding lasts) The restriction, imposed by the Few Intelligent Slashdot Posters (FISP), is designed to prevent Mr. Katz from spewing his tired old bullshit on the front page of our beloved web site each week.
-weewee
At some level this is nothing new. All professional sporting events in the US are all prefaced by a little statement that any recording or broadcasting of the event without the express written consent of whatever association runs the sport (NFL, NHL, NBA, etc.) is a crime.
However, at what level does this become news and thus open to the public? Surely it seems inappropriate to forbid posting scores or even showing still images of the athletes. Then at what level does this blur into showing a series of still images?
Is it possible for criminals to own the legal rights to the recordings of them committing criminal acts? (I reserve judgement on whether a home video of a bunch of MPAA lawyers at work counts as a crime).
Somehow it is legal to Wal-Mart to film me while I am in the parking lot, and presumably do whatever they want with the film, and yet I can't bring my camcorder into the Olympic games for which I paid a fortue for a ticket and then put it on my website. It is not really that surprising, but at the same time it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Anyway, just another example of the collision of ancient systems of exchange entertaiment as information intersecting with the modern world.
"Politics is for the moment, an equation lasts eternity" -A. Einstein
Due to this move, the Olympic committee will be ignored by those who want to report things, while the entire outdated concept will be ignored by everyone else.
Which is worse, Ignorance or Apathy? I don't know, and I don't care.
Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?
If there is justice in the world, the IOC will be held to this in five or six years. The current broadcasting industry world will look so very different, if it's even around anymore at all. Then the IOC can be mired in their own stupidity and die a slow media death without the support of the Internet.
Unfortunately they'll probably just rescind this directive when they realize where all the ad money has gone in a few years, and embrace the Internet media outlets in true CorporateWhore(tm) style. And it's a real shame.
--
Rob Carlson
./sarcasm
I care more about Windows than I do the Olympics... and as a dedicated Linux advocate and Mac user, that says a lot. I've tried very hard to ignore the olympics since the Tanya Harding thing made figure scating the only thing you could watch on CBS for about two years straight.
With this in mind, from what I've picked up, it seems to me that the IOC is being quite basatrdly in its tactics. A >TEN year ban on material transmission? The legal equivalent of anally raping anyone who uses the olympic logo other than themselves?
I watched about an hour of the summer olympics. And I caught a lot of the diving because it happened to be on in the bars when I was getting off work, and it beats the piss out of Buffy. It seems to me that the Olympics is nothing more than one long photo op for the so-called "journalists" that are hosting it... twenty minutes of sob story human interest filler, twenty minutes of commercials, fifteen minutes of the commentator showing off his dental work and blowing shit out his mouth, and five minutes of event.
The IOC and NBC are obviously making a killing off of the advertising. By restricting rebroadcast of the footage, even on the web, they effectively keep some enterprising soul who's taped the whole thing from letting the world know that after commercials, commentary, human interest, ceremonies and credits, the olympic games lasted about six and a half hours.
Think anyone's going to care in ten years? I doubt it- we'll be busy bitching about how much Star Wars Episode Three sucks.
/. sarcasm
I mean can you actually copyright a sporting event? wheres the creativity?
I agree.. i watched verry little of the olympics this year and will watch even less for the summer olympics. And this really saddens me. I used to really enjoy watching the olympics and how everyone got together to watch and support the athletes... It has just been getting more and more commercialized that I can't even enjoy watching it anymore. Now the olympics are just one big commercial after the other. And please don't forget that they broke the tradition of holding the olympics every fours years, and why? why so they could capitalize on it twice as often of course.
:o)
*sigh* Who wants to start their own contry where there is no money but only a barter system of goods and services and if you produce neither a good nor are willing to provide a service you are exiled?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I take no responsibility for any spelling mistakes in the above post.
>There is a story...I *really* wish i could think >of the name of it.... takes place in the >future,in this communist society like place
If you're thinking of
Walter M. Miller, Jr.: A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959)
It's a religious, not a communist society.
That might not be the story you're thinking of,
but it certainly fits.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Penny Arcade has a paticular comic that some of the posts on this reminded me of ;)
Failure is not an option.
Failure is not an option.
It comes bundled with Windows.
I'm a rower -- something that almost never gets any air time. And it frustrates the h*ll out of me. And I know that there are millions of other people in the world who also follow obscure sports who are just as frustrated as I am.
People are always complaining about how no one will pay for content on the internet. To the contrary, if I could actually watch the rowing sprints, in their totality, without yammering play-by-play from clueless desk jockeys, I'd cough up some $$. And I believe that many others would, too. An opportunity going begging here.
~OutOfMindGranted, there has alwasy been opposition to technological shifts. My dad use to say that you'd have to have a man running some one mile in front of your car to warn people.
But my point was more one of not sitting idle and letting organizations sensor us like this just because they have what sounds like a rational argument. "But poor people could die if we don't give them life-long welfare" almost sounds compelling.. Till you realize the free-rider problem will ultimately make a society full of dependants leaching off the now minority working class.
Rethinking a bit, it makes sence that at critical passes such as this, it is important to have smooth transition. In the dawn of the automotive age, we had to make allowances for horses. In the dawn of the networked age, we can't simply allow all old-style forms of civilization to go belly up while waiting for the migration.. I guess I do applaud that there was only 10 years applied to the Olympic Moratorium. It could have been an unlimited mandate I guess.
-Michael
-Michael
The current IOC board needs to go, and people with a billion times more integrity needs to be put in place. Then the Olympic games may have some of its past glory restored.
Odd thought: If a broadcasting company licensed to broadcast the games also owns a website, does this ruling prohibit them from streaming video through that website?
In other words, they took away our rights to watch what we wanted when. They payed a bazillion dollars to have exclusive coverage, so that they were our only [american] choice. They took away the rights of other broadcast stations that could have made different choices, and choose to air at other times, other formats, other events. (There was more than just swimming this year, right?)
It makes me boil to listen to NBC whine about ratings, money lost, etc, when it was THEM that spent a ton of money. And did a bad job at it. Actually I take that part back...they can do a bad job at it if they want, but let someone else have a chance to make it good!
Rader
"Only a few events are covered: ...Gymnastics..."
I was mainly interested in gymnastics and watched as much as I could and I can tell you it was covered so poorly that I still cannot believe it. The whole idea of having an evening of 20 minute long individual pieces coverig gymnastics and few other unrelated sport, with no schedule is stupid beyond most of what I've seen on commercial TV.
of course, what they actually showed made it unworthy of waiting through the evening (not that the gymnasts that were shown are not excellent). They didn't even show the chinese men! well, they had few minutes summary where they showed few clips...
if you think that gymnastics was covered better than the rest, well, that just shows how poor the olympics coverage was... I hope the TV ratings went down.
erik
...all excited, don't know why...
are you saying that women and men should have separate governments?
erik
...all excited, don't know why...
I just wonder what would have happened, if instead of media over the net, this was the move from BW to Color. I guess they would restrict any color broadcasts by anyone.
I guess the argument would be the same if instead of the net, it was other stations. Yet, other stations would only be parroting the "official" stations. This seems to be the same way, and warrants a closer look at how we define data after it is broadcasted to the public. Well, I will stop here... lunch time!!!
I seek not only to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, I seek the things they sought.
Personally, I was a college/amateur baseball player (though my current job doesn't leave time for that anymore - just softball). I always enjoyed watching the baseball games there - even as a Yankees fan (what a payroll!), I do like the purity of baseball that has been less touched by money (heck, even the Little League WS is getting pretty commercial now). I enjoy seeing athletes compete in a variety of other sports, especially those (such as gymnastics) where the participants do some incredible things (I'm all for a minimum age for that, so we don't have so many anorexic 13 yr olds ruining themsleves, but that's another story). I'm from the USA, and I usually cheer for the US athletes, but I'd rather see good competition than a full US blowout.
Battlebots would be a neat addition (better than synchonized swimming), but hey, you can't have everything.
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
So long, Olympics! It was nice knowing ya!
Here's a chance for the (quite frankly) aging members of the IOC (who clearly have spent too much time stuffing their own pockets and being entertained by hookers) to advance the Olympic movement to a new generation of humans who don't regard it the same way their parents did. But they instead decide that the "Internet Generation" doesn't count as a means to promote the Olympic movement (and sponsors like 3M and Coke who tag along for the ride).
Lets face facts, THEY DON'T GET IT.
Nor does it see that they are going to get it anytime soon. After all, these are the same humans who kept athletes from posting diaries on their own websites (click here for more) thus restricting the description of the whole Olympic experience to broadcasters who paid billions for the right to do so.
Until the IOC gets people who are more 'net savvy, you'll see more boneheaded decisions like this. I guess oral sex and senility gets in the way of rational thought.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
I agree, it's all about control. The only reason the IOC is doing this is that they don't yet have the means to control Internet broadcasting.
I promise you, even as we speak, IOC has a team of people working on securing Internet broadcasting rights to whoever pays the most money. Probably before the next Olympics, but definitely before this 10 year ban is up, the IOC will have some announcement about their new, great, exclusive deal with Company X to broadcast all events on the Internet. And all Company X had to do was pony up the money to get it.
The real question in my mind is, will anyone even care about the Olympics in 10 years? I know I won't: I didn't watch a single even this past summer, and don't plan on doing so ever again.
Is that the IOC will *not* grant a license to record (as they do with television) for a net broadcaster, for ANY amount of money. Tha'ts hwat they are saying.
They'er saying that if some net broadcaster offers them fees like the television companies do, they will NOT hand them out anyway.
One advantage of delaying the coverage is that the TV stations can make sure that only the games where the USA won will be shown. If they were shown live then there would be chances of showing games where, *gulp*, the USA didn't come first.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
If you freely hand out your name, you can't bitch about what they do with it. Especially if it's true. You had no reasonable expectation of privacy.
The person has a right to discuss with anyone and everyone who and what was said.
Well, I hate to say it, but the Olympics were doing just fine before billions of dollars were invested. I mean, honestly, other than a nice flat place, what do you need to run a race?
Sure, without a directive like this the Olympics would lose a lot of fundings, but big deal! A lot of people have lost sight of what the Olympics are supposed to be. Not a spectator event, but a way to bring nations together without war.
Where else can you get two countries that absolutely hate each other to fight without bloodshed?
The Olympics provide a much-needed form of release; instead of the people getting all riled up for war and building tanks, they get all riled up for sport and build stadiums.
Dave
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
First of all, splitting up events and spreading them out is ridiculous. Delaying them 1/2 a day for prime time is ridiculous. Pushing gymnastics till almost midnight, while saying it's prime time is outright mean. Come on, 12 year old girls are suppose to stay up every night till midnight, just to watch their "prime time" event? What a bunch of crap. You can't postpone events half a day (when you can get on the internet and find out who wins live) in the name of prime time, and then spread the crap to midnight.
What a joke. I hope they take a beating so bad in ratings that it'll go back to the good ol' days. I ****LOVED**** waking up in the middle of the night, or middle of the day, turn the channel to some odd ESPN or even odder channel (many choices), and watch CURLING, or spit ball shooting, or ANYTHING. The event was live (or almost live), fascinating, and much more educational than some stupid heart-to-heart interest story about how someone amputated both legs, and still came back for the 1 mile run. Then you watch the race, and they lose anyway.
I'd rather watch some person in the stands holding a camcorder, talking in Italian, with a budget of only 5 pesos, than watch NBC spend millions of dollars on making McCrap again.
Rader
IOC = I Own Copyright
still something I'd like to hear people's opinion about. A cooleague of mine who is in tech-support as well was forced to reply an e-mail in which he stated that the installation of a host-controlled modem under Linux was something we do not provide tech-support for. After this, the customer took the entire mail, including my colleague's first and last name, and posted it to a newsgroup. Since this is an article about freedom to put things on the web, my question is, is this acceptable. I mean, I wouldn't mind someone posting my support e-mail to the web, but including my name...
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
The IOC is only thinking about their duty to present the Olympics for the betterment of mankind, through the example of peaceful competition. Riiiiiight.... $kching$
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
However, 10 years is too long. Noone can tell what the media world will look like by then. Traditional TV may already have been replaced by webcasts by then, who knows. If I were them I'd prohibit Olympics video for the next Olympics, and look again after that.
Note they're only prohibiting video, not other news - they can't do that, of course.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
Wow, what a business opportunity. P2P internet trading of digital video, jpegs, and eye-witness accounts of Olympic contests. Generated by spectators at the arenas with web-enabled cell phones.
Download 2mb of figure skateing... Without the broadcast commentary!!! I might even pay for it!
Hey everybody... The Internet is not the be all end all of existance. If they don't want to sell rights to internet companies they don't have to, and if someone will pay them for exclusive rights it is their perogative to accept or deny.
As for everyone crowing about money being chosen over amaturism and all, take a look from another perspective... Maybe (noteice I said MAYBE) they want to get this out to as many people as possible while still pulling in enough money to cover the event. Since most of the people in the world still don't have internet access, but a great deal more people do have television, it would make sense to give the TV stations as a priority over the internet sites. If the TV people give them the ultimatum of "us or them", they'll chose TV. Nothing wrong with that WRT the IOC... Get mad at the TV execs if you want, but even they are only trying to protect their business investments.
-
Addlepated - punk & metal
Perhaps the NFL and the networks should ban Superbowl coverage on the internet, too?
42
I feel the IOC is going too far on this one. The protection of broadcasting rights is in their best interest, and I feel they have :)
every right to do it. But this sort of move constitutes horrible PR, first and foremost. Additionally, IANAL, but couldnt this
"time shifting" of Olympic broadcasts be considered "fair use" if the origional content,(adverts and all) is not altered? Overall, however, the point I'm trying to make is that these "hard line" actions that the fearful IOC is making will only
further cheapen the quality of the Olympics and alienate the audience.
Just my $0.02
"Dancing is the vertical expression of a horizontal desire" --Robert Frost
Just image in 5 years when all broadcast is on the internet and available everywhere, you will have to buy an analogue TV just to watch the olympics.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
It's a darn good thing that those countries that absolutely hate each other have a non-destructive outlet for their aggressions.
As an American, I certainly remember my own shaking vehemence toward the Red scoundrels of Moscow, back in the COLD WAR, and yet whenever those Olympic games came around I realized that both Commie Reds and upright American citizens like myself were still humans who appreciated the drama of an athlete struggling towards physical excellence and the accolades of his peers. Why, for a short time I didn't even want to incinerate them with nuclear weapons...
The notion of the Olympics as a place where athleticism is pursued above the banalities of international conflict, where legends are made & peace is formed - that's a load of balderdash. The Olympics have always been about media control, for the benefit of states & commerce in general and the status of the organizers in particular.
The 'Olympic ideal' simplifies the issues of politics, commerce & sports giving merchants another spectacle like Christmas to exploit and states a frame to place their images of nationalist struggle. We can't fix the Olympics to eliminate these 'benefits' without removing the features that make it THE global, elitist sporting event.
There're some interesting sites that describe people's objections to the Olympics in the Disinformation's dossier on Olympic protests.
In defense if NBC, they actually had to make some very hard decisions on how to air the olympics. The main issue that they had to overcome was the fact that, due to the time difference between the US and Australia, almost all of the events took place while america was sleeping.
While i agree that its annoying to watch everthing many hours after it has been filmed, and to have to put up with all the bullshit they edited into the broadcasts (ie. half hour bios on some athelete youve never heard of who takes last place), it was still better then having all the main crowd pleasing events showed at 4am.
Basically what im saying is that, even though I thought the coverage sucked, I understand the decisions that they made, and I dont really see a better way they could have done it.
Phalex
..wow, this got me really enraged. Fuck the broadcast television networks. Sorry, but this kind of backward thinking really pisses me off. Must... end... rant... now...
Mike
Intel transfer the difficult from Hadware to software, for get more power, programmer need more technology. -- chinaitn
Its not about broadcasts though. They have even barred the athletes from publishing their diaries on the net. Doing that would hardly put a dent in the precious viewing time that the TV networks have paid for. Thats over doing it. I think that the IOC has gotten way too greedy and since no one has challenged them they will continue to step on the rights of athletes to do what they wish with their own words while competing in the Olympics (ooops will I get sued now for mentioning that word?). Do you think a boycott is in order?
BMaximus
Didn't miss 'em either.
Guess I won't watch the next 5 either.
Put the Olympics against 'Who wants to be a millionaire', and see who wins....
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
Erm, there won't be any Olympics in 2010.
2008 and 2012, yes, but not 2010...
--
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
So SLC is now under fire to change their liquor laws for the 2002 games because the LDS's make it mandatory that if you want to drink w/o eating you have to belong to one of those bogus clubs. But bribe taking is ok I guess.
The Olympics has become a sick distorted representation of what it once was. The money in it, from coporate sponsors has corrupted it's perspective to the point where it's more about promoting sponsors than atheletism (and atheletes).
I thought maybe the web would fix this to a degree by bypassing much of the sponsorship. Instead, the IOC has made a move which will surely push the Olympics in the direction of irrelevance. Sooner or later the corporate sponsors will see the ratings plunge and react accordingly. More importantly though, this is a powerful demonstration to anyone who might be interested in the Olympics just how central sponsors are to the Olympics.
sigs are a waste of space
Ahh..err..what's an "olympics"?
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
$ man reality
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
IMHO the IOC should just open up the olympics and license web coverage to as many content providers as are willing to pay.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
That's a great idea ... configure your webcast with a 10-year delay! :-) That means you can start selling ads now for products that won't even exist by 2010 ... or something ...
Corollary to Moore's Law: The IQ of new computer owners is declining.
What's new? The bigger a company is, greedier and more inhuman it becomes.
The worse of it is that each time the technology makes any progress in helping end users there's a big brother somewhere complaining that this new thing is undermining him.
Each time we should answer: "Yes it is undermining ya! It's because you're a pain in the butt and we finally found a way to get rid of ya!"
But they got the money for lobbying, they got the money for slowing it down, they got the laws for it, and we let them eat the wool out of our back (from a french-canadian expression, is there any real american couterpart?).
$3,500,000,000 until 2008
That's right "billion" with a "b".
Internet broadcasting would not sum up to be anywhere near the amount that it would decrease that value to the IOC. And that money is what funds the games.
And again, who care about watching the games? It is not about that. It is about the fact that US and all the rich countries around the world will send athletes regardless of how much money the IOC has, but all the poor countries won't be able to and the games will become that much more adulterated without funding.Nonperiodic Central Trajectory
The best place to hide, is out in the open, because none would expect to find you there. If you go into a good hiding place, people will search harder and harder until they find you.
Similarly, when trying to keep people away from doing something, banning them will only make them work harder. Finding someway to let them get what they want easily, though still in some way keeping to your principles, would work better.
Take for example the movie and music industries. Keeping VHS, recordable CDs, or tapes away from people would never work, so they allow it but use copy protection of some sort. Had they just banned them, they would be used anyway.
The IOC needs to let people have some things, just offer more to their paying TV advertisers instead of cripling and not adding.
Have you read my journal today?
It cracks me up as more and more big industries are showing signs of fear of the internet. You hear of telco companies trying to control (fearing, rather) Voice-over-IP apps, record labels trying to control (again, out of fear) Mp3 apps, motion-picture studios trying to control video compression apps (") and now, big TV-sponsored events trying to hide their events from us (netizens.) I don't get angry anymore, I just laugh, like an playful cat might as its rodent-prey squirms under its paw.
--just kicked back like italics
Personally I think the heart and soul of the Olympics is track and field, but I'm not sure if I've ever watched it. You'd think that they skip straight to the finals of the sprints, and that nobody has to make it through the heats to get there.
And if you think this ban on the internet is bad, how about this last olympics ban on moving pictures?! The sports highlights would show a picture of the action while a commentator read what happened. They claimed that video could be used after the broadcast, but after watching their broadcast of a US soccer match I wanted to watch the highlights on the same channel and all I got were still pictures!
Another little issue is that they would not allow athletes to post their diaries online. For those of you that have not followed an obscure sport (I follow cycling in the US), this is the absolute best coverage of an event that you can get. Reading in the athletes own words what they were thinking at that crucial moment is far more informative than listening to some bozo that's covering 150 different sports because his hair looks good.
The olympics are dead to me.
PS. How the hell do they get to trademark a name like Olympics, Olympic, Olympiad...etc?!
t
Lets cut the crap - what we REALLY want is a drug olympics - see who can put away the most narcotics.
Of course, we`d need people to test them, make sure they`re not doing any prohibited `sporting` activities, such as a sprint, or perhaps a little walking, to clear their heads. It has to be just: Sit down, skin/shoot up, repeat until senseless...
The Olympics lost me about 12 years ago, when I realized that -
- it's not the friendly competition between inspired amateurs that it's portrayed to be
- it's too commercial
- it's an outlet for dangerous nationalist/ideologist sentiments
If I had still been interested, I could have added this a couple of years ago-- it is run by a corrupt organization, the IOC
Some may care if it's not webcast, but I won't be among the mourners. Maybe this will hasten its demise.</soapbox>
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I'm so happy for reading this, if just somebody could ban commercials on the internet for the next decade then I'd sure feel like in heaven. :)
you're right.. if you think money is a good reason for censorship. "It would cost us a lot of money" is IMO no reason to censor ANYONE.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
I didn't watch the Olympics this year, though I tried real hard... It sucks when all you get is small clips of the home crowd (USA) and the medal winners for 4 minutes at a time, delayed by however many hours. I used to like watching the competition (usually with the sound down, so I didn't have to listen to the inane announcers), but they made it pretty difficult this year.
Guess I'll stick to watching "World's Strongest Man" and "Battlebots"...
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
I didn't watch it at all this time around. I really don't like hearing someone say "so-and-so did good in the tryouts and did you know...". I could do with out all the crappy talk.
Also, I hate this idea that the Olympics can be shown only by one network. That is stupid!!! When you have more than one network, you can see different events, and you are not limited to what one network thinks you should see.
The worst part is I heard they were looking to make the Olympics a pay-per-view event! I hope they don't do that. Then I will never watch the Olympics! I have had enough with the greedy media!
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
Proposal: :)
Let's all send urine samples on the IOC address... they should know what to do with it. Just to let them know that those watching Olympic games on the net are not as much on crack as they are
--
You mean less money to support (read: make freakin' rich) the small oligarchy of Olympic Officials?
I hold with Jerome K. Jerome: The Olympic gold medal indicates that someone did something absolutely useless to humanity better than everyone else.
The IOC doesn't want this tripe broadcast? Oh well. I guess the technological development of the Net will have to continue without them. I know it'll be hard....but I'm pretty sure we'll manage.
Trurl
--
Fsck the fscking fsckers!
that they've just sealed their fate. The internt routes around cencorship like dammage. Now there will be warez olympics videos all over. Can't people learn that *people* aren't honest? There's no way that they can prevent it from happening. Metallica mp3's are still on napster, Gnutella is still up and running (not at the best performance, but still) and there is no way *anyone* can get at the "underground" warez archives.
da w00t.
da w00t. mtfnpy?
My first though is "or what?" What authority does the IOC have over my website? If I publish scores that I got from NBC, or journals written by eyewitnesses, what law have I broken? I didn't enter into any agreement with the IOC.- -----------
-------------------------------------------
So far, it's a lot of griping and fuming, what can be done to offset NBC's practices?
You cannot put up a website covering the olympics, but how about websites about the olympics, with a nice big "We'd tell you about the olympics, but NBC decided to buy the olympics, and won't allow anyone else to cover it... In doing this patently anticompetative move, they have ruined any chance of alternative coverage... Please boycott, petition, whatever it takes, to make sure they cannot get away with this!"
C'mon folks, the net can be a tremendous political outlet, and it's users can become a tremendous political power... The olympics can make it even moreso, if a net without boundaries can take on an international games committee...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
You shouldn't use words like "gymnast" to describe that person. It implies that she is an athlete instead of a corporate product. Perhaps this person is an athlete in Real Life, but within the olypmics themselves, she was just a player on a stage, giving a paid performance. Words like "gymnast" merely legitimize the olympics and obscure what it really is.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
In ten years will there really be a greatly distinguishable difference between TV and the web?
In ten years broadband will be taken for granted in millions of homes, and web access and television channels will be very interwoven, even the teleco's will be all mixed up. Dollar says this gets over turned.
-"You'll have plenty of time to sleep when you're dead."
OOOOOOPS! I think that was an IDEA!
Yea...that's what the world needs...a Techolympics!
LOOK MA! I COINED A TERM!!!!!!!!
NBC...No...FOX!...Look...have I got a deal for YOU!
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
t
If you make TV companies compete with the internet, then the Olympics wins, because they have more barganing power with the TV companies. But the Internet has to be able to compete - internet broadcasters need to be able to stump up the same kind of wad as TV networks. Thet's not going to be possible until they can pull in big hitting advertisers.
You normally get to the Net to escape TV and highly educational things like the Olympics, STNG or Chuck Norris...
Now the Net is sports free, and the IOC has done its worst public campaign ever. I am in a jolly good mood. It's not like the New Scientist is pulling off the Net.
By 2010, even the networks will realize that Costas is not funny.
Corollary to Moore's Law: The IQ of new computer owners is declining.
no really: what sports did you care about in the olympics and why? is it because you like the sport (and can play it yourself or watch it on the telly or support local teams, etc) or because your country was in it (other countries exist only to be made fun of by u.s. broadcasters)?
we're all geeks, maybe we should be focusing on pgl or cyberathelete competitions or something...
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
Oh no! No Pot-Curling. What a shame! The best events will be covered on the internet anyway: IOC bribery and scandle, and 14-yrold drug violations.
Someone you trust is one of us.
The Olympics, or rather the organisation responsible for the Olympics and everyone associated with them, have become a singularly evil bunch. I've not watched an Olympic event, not intentionally anyway, since the 1988 Olympics. Continue the Boycott, no question. Boycott Coke. Boycott McDonalds. Boycott Mary Hart.
:wq
Exactly.
Why would ANYONE in the West (outside of product-peddlers on Mad Ave.) care about a provincial sporting event like the Olympics?
The Net strikes at the very physical boundaries that made the Olympics marginally interesting to the land-locked flag-waver of years past. Now, with the click of a mouse, you can be reading/following events anywhere in the world.
The Olympics were irrelavent before this decision; the grip of the tar pit they're in just increased.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, The Histories
Dear IOC,
This move makes perfect sense.
Why would we want to have access to muliple events at the same time, and possibly from the perpective of our home country. You would only be giving us too many choices.
Instead they are doing the right thing, forcing everyone to watch the same network. The network that has paid the most for the coverage, and we will watch what they choose to cover. You can rest assured that we will enjoy it too. After all, why would you want to expand your market?
Thank-you for sparing us the agony of making up our own minds. We will continue to trust that your commitee know whats best for everyone.
Keep up the good work.
Your humble servants,
The people
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
Yes: Go to 2.
No: THINK then go back to 1.
2. Did you or they get caught?
Yes: We do not know you and what you have brought to the Olympic movement is disgrace! Get lost!
No: Excellent! Go to 3.
3. Will events which use sporting equipment sold by Official Olympic sponsors be featured prominently?
Yes: Excellent! Go to 4.
No: No? No!? What are you some kind of alturistic charity nut? Get out of here!
4. Do you solemnly promise never to call into question who the IOC are and why the public really has no control over this scam?
Yes: Great! See you in Athens!
No: Fold this form in half 5 times, add salt, chew and swallow.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"// this is the most hacked, evil, bastardized thing I've ever seen. kjb"
* Sports, sports and more sports (no human interest crap);
* Events that *gasp* didn't have British athletes shoe ins to win (prob. because they just don't have the greatest athletes);
* Commentators that weren't in love with the sound of their own voice (i.e. would actually shut up for most of the event)
God knows why the NBC (or any other US network for that matter) feels that the simple act of taking part in a sport isn't thrilling enough. NOOOOOO... we have to be subjegated to endless clips/monologs of how "Skippy the polevaulter" is vaulting this pole for his mother, who just got over a really bad case of hangnail.
Nathan
If you don't have anything nice to say, say it often.
- Ed the Sock
They've just managed to alienate a certain segment of the population. That segment... including me... didn't bother to watch the Olympics on TV this time around, and probably won't in the future either.
... for what it did this past time. No, the triplecast was not the answer (or maybe they've dropped the first shoe of figuring out how to pay-per-view the olympics...) But neither was this. The night of the cycling road race, they were live on the air AS IT WAS HAPPENING talking to Harry Smith (huh?) about the race we would finally see over a day later. Harry's Big Insight was that Lance Armstrong once had cancer. He's apparently the last person to find this out. SHOW THE FREAKING RACE!!! So you may lose some ad revenue? You think more people watch "Cursed" and "Titans" than the triple jump or the luge? What they are really showing by this is that people would rather see things as they happen rather than wait according to their gordian time-delay schedule. So offer me the pay-per-view of the cycling and sculling, speed skating and curling events (they sound purposefully obscure to make a point - but there's something sublime about curling I really like watching...) and I'll pay - but GIVE SOME RHYME OR REASON TO IT. Heck, I'll even watch Bob Costas for the whole thing if you'll serve up things as they happen.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I think this is ridiculous. The olympics is not about how much money adc cbs or nbc can make off of it but about the amature competition. which even that is going to shit in a handbag look how many professionals are being allowed to compete. I think the olympic commitee is just a bunch of whores and they enflame me to no end.
This just in...
In other news...-p4
(c) All Rights Released.
This is totally what I have in mind when I think about Olympics : amateurism, not the power of money, etc..
But, wait, what did I just read ? Oh god...
The problem as I see it, is that the IOC is given far too much priveledge, and they are increasingly acting as a business rather than a non-profit organization. And politicians and marketing people will say that this is good for such and such country, good for the athletes.
The IOC's barring of internet broadcasts shows quite clearly, that they want to control everything about the olympics. They already control all the video footage captured, and it was highlighted on Australian television, when footage of a Paralympic event couldn't be shown by a rival station (even though they could get the proper permission from the other station) because the IOC owned the pictures. To my knowledge, there isn't another organization that has these strict controls over usage of media. And for what purpose does it have these strict controls? Solely for protection of sponsors interests. Is this good for the IOC? Yes. Is this good for competing athletes? No. All it achieves is narrowing of their audience, which seems slightly strange.
Less people who see an event, less incentive for sponsors to sponsor the Olympics. They be digging themselves their own grave.
Cheers,
leroy.
Or what about this
This just in: IOC announces that they have taken a new stance on delivering Olympic Content. Said one IOC member who wished to remain anonymous: "The new stance is great. Basically we will stand in a sandy place, lean over, and bury our heads in the stand. From that point of view, we can't see the Internet as being a viable distribution channel and therefore it must be incapable of making any money. I mean, who uses it anyway?"
Sport has no place on the internet. The Olympic athletes are cheats anyway.
Would you happen to have a citation for that case?
I'd like to take a look at that opinion more closely. If you don't know the citation, at the very least, who were the parties and what year was it?
Thanks
More proof that the world outside of Slashdot is made up of old-media bozos.
Corollary to Moore's Law: The IQ of new computer owners is declining.
I viewed and enjoyed some nude pictures of Australian Olympians posted in a newsgroup. It is highly unlikely the well-made pictures were approved by the IOC. The pronouncements of such high sounding groups are as irrelevant to Internet viewers as the pronouncements of the Soviet Communists when they tried to sack Gorbachev. Information is free, and attempts to control it are doomed. Banning information just assures it the widest possible dissemination. Denmark removed all forms of censorship, and the country still thrives. There was a brief flurry of porn sales until curiosity was satisfied, then life returned to normal, and the Danish police turned to matters far more important than small bookstores with limited numbers of customers. The control freaks have lost, although it may take them a few years, or centuries, to realize it.
Business wants control because of money whereas hackers want control because it is their natural way of handling things. I know this is an odd comparison, but I want to point out that the latter group is in charge here.
I'm "not" always wrong, so I put an extra "not" in each sentence.
It may very well be that in ten years time the reverse will have happened, and that the net will have excluded the olympics.
For the one or the other reason, the Olympics committee reminds me of the Open Group's Motif and how they succeeded in relegating themselves to a position of irrelevance.
It's dangerous to overestimate the power you have, and to exert it beyond the point where you alienate key individuals in your audience.
The international olympics committee draw most of their authority from the morals behind these games. As soon as the public starts perceiving them for what they really are, a bunch of corrupt money grubbers, their appeal will rapidly wane. You may find as well that a number of key individuals are very active in spreading this message.
wow... thats really lame. Good job IOC
I'm sure there's still a few dot-coms out there with venture capital to burn, even in today's economy, who would pay good money for the priviledge of broadcasting the Olympics via the web. It would cut down complaints about the way NBC broadcasts the games (or whoever it is in two years), and it would give even more money to the ridiculously corrupt and wealthy Olympic organizers. It seems like a win for everyone, except of course for the dot-com who wasted millions on exclusive rights to crappy jerky video of the Olympic Games.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
hey maybe we can pool some money and get them to change their minds.
A blog about stuff.
A lot of people have lost sight of what the Olympics are supposed to be. ... a way to bring nations together without war.
That role has been taken over by MacDonalds.
it's every two years now, one winter and one summer...really sad I went through 3 tvs...every time one of those human intrest stories showed ud I'd throw somthing
Oops....you'll know what I'm talkin about in a bit.
About personal/team achievment.
It is now a marketing event and about corporate sponsorship.
It has lost it's luster and is now just another tainted media event.
When it reverts to it's previous intended purpose/glory I'll start paying attention again.
Rick B.
The IOC, one of the most corrupt governing bodies in existence is HEAVILY EURO centric. While I must say the Corp's offering the most money are American Broadcasters but the people making these decisions answer to a VERY Greedy spaniard who would rather be at the olympics that at his dying wifes side. The corruption of the IOC is legendary, especially some of the african countries. The delegates think it is perfectly fine to demand gifts for consideration. I call that corruption, the ICO calls it business as usual..Who knows but I don't think this is an american ONLY problem thank-you very much
Well, the upside is that while web journalism is being stepped on, we can take comfort in the fact that the IOC's spokesman is named Dick Pound.
heehee. Dick. Pound. get it?
hee hee.
It now reads:
The goal of the Olympic Movement is to make money, buttloads of money. So much money that we won't actually need to put the squeeze on cities who want to host the Olympics, though it won't stop us from doing it anyway. We want to roll around in 50's and 100's and put rolled up 20's in our ears and nose!
We want to educate youth that there is nothing better than money. As a matter of fact, we just like to say that word. Money. Money. Moneymoneymoneymoneymoneymoney. We will not discriminate as long as you pay up and play by our totalitarian rules, and if you are an athlete you have no rights whatsoever. If we say smile for the camera, you better smile Buck'o!
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
This isn't really anything new. The IOC has made many outlandish decisions in the past and will continue to in future.
The ones I feel sorry for are the athletes that spend years training and competing just to get their 10 minutes of fame. After the Olympics are over they sponsor some TV adds and quickly fall out of the spotlight due to lack of coverage. Will CNN continue to pass the torch or will they bury it if it doesn't get ratings? If it doesn't rate it doesn't skate!
This all comes back to the IP issues. Who owns your thoughts, your best times, your face in the spotlight. The IOC is basically saying they own the athletes and you're not going to see them unless we get money.
I personally did not watch them this year, but I would think that the Internet would actually help radio and T.V. coverage. They could show reruns of the best moments that would get people excited and want to watch them on the T.V.
They could show the events that no one ever puts on T.V. and get extra ad revenue for doing nothing. If they want to squeeze every last penny out of the world, they should embrace the Net...
But these are just more reasons why I should rule the world anyway :)
=-=-=-=-=
"Do you hear the Slashdotters sing,
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Oh bother.
I just don't understand why or how people can think that this is the way it should be. I mean come on! I thought the Internet was the newest form of media, that this was the way that the whole world was going for news distribution.
.ph0x
What will be next? No more Slashdot because the information can't tightly be controlled by corporate america?
And what happens if I were to record my owne footage and put it on my site in a digital format?.. What then? Will i be sued and silenced by money hungry corporate pigs?
I say 'piss on-em!'
bah!
Isn't the olympics the property of the entire world? when did it become the property of the networks....
I hope someone get's on the netowrks arses about this.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Not just the Internet, but the Olympics was also a wasted oportunity for Digital TV. Digital TV, satellite or cable, claims that one of its advantages is that it offers many channels. So why did the broadcasters not take advantage of this and allocate a channel to continuously cover a particular event - both heats and finals. That way viewers who want to follow a particular (maybe minority interest) event can watch all of it and viewers could choose which events to follow rather than only being shown (on a small number of channels) what the editors wish the vieweres to see.
the athletes shouldn't be censored either. but if NBC pays 3.5 billion (seen in another post, I have no way to verify), that can send a LOT of athletes all over the world. maybe we'll have to call off the opening ceremony, but the games arent about the ceremony anyway.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
If I were determined to netcast it anyway there would be very little they could do to stop me.
For example, I could obtain servers in nations that don't care what the olympic committee says or have lax copyright laws, then upload the information direct from TV broadcasts off satellite or from broadcast TV, using VPN to mask content of the stream, with other content obfuscation techniques.
There are literally dozens of ways to circumvent and content restriction. Also, facts are not copyrightable in the USA, reporting of them is no violation of any law in the USA, so internet reporting of events (not actually streaming audio/video) can not be effectively stopped.
This is just more evidence that the Olympics has nothing to do with amature competition and everything to do with selling tickets to a human circus. The broadcasters being the primary ticket buyers that P.T. Barnum spoke of in his "suckers" comment.
Visit DC2600
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
From earlier this century...
Lawmakers today passed a law prohibiting the use of automobiles, those recently invented "horseless carriages" which allow convenient travel overland, within city limits. While recognizing their unparalleled utility for travel between communities, lawmakers passed this law in order to protect the investments of buggy whip manufacturers. "Buggy whip manufacturers are an important sector of our economy," one congressman was quoted as saying. "It is essential and fair that we protect the investment and business of those corporations by limiting this technology which stands to undermine their very business, and, hence, our very way of life."
-Rob
Are they expecting TV-networks to make alternate news-broadcasts for the net. Many broadcasters stream their news shows on the net. I don't think they are going to re-edit each show just because they have paid licenses for showing it on the air, but it's not possible to have a license for streaming it is part of a streaming news show. And what's this part of ensuring locality. TV-broadcasts are often by satellite, so they are not very local anymore.
I guess that you forgot about how the Arabs murdered 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1979. Even more disgusting was their threat to boycott the most recent Olympics if a planned memorial for the murdered Israeli athletes was carried out.
Woopty Doo Basil, what does it all mean?!
so get a Russian server and wala
--------------
Nuts to the Olympics. I wanna see 500 pound steel warriors with lots of spinning buzzsaws and whirling knives going at each other.
The simple fact is that the only way the Olympics gets funded is by these sponsors and by television money paid because the advertising is so lucrative. If you force the television networks to compete with the internet, you are going to create a competitive market that results in less money to support the games. The games are already dominated by the rich and fat countries - allowing Internet broadcasts would make it even worse as the IOC could not afford to help fund athletes from poorer countries.
Nonperiodic Central Trajectory
Does this mean a 10 year delay in using Olympic clips, or that 10 years from now the 2010 Olympics won't have this issue? While I suspect the former, it's not clear.
TheGeek
TheGeek
http://www.geekrights.org
Kill the monkey
This kind of behavior needs to be taken for what it is. Two hundred years ago, if someone else made an end run around your business and you couldn't earn back the capital you sunk into it, oh well, it was bad investment. Hope you got in touch with Lloyd's before getting into it.
If the market wants Internet coverage of the Olympic games, then free market logic dictates that the market should get Internet coverage of the Olympic games. It used to be said often enough that anyone who worked in open source was anti-capitalist. This incident, the DeCSS trial, the Napster trial, the DMCA, and other artifacts of the modern information economy all beg the question, is anyone a capitalist?
If anyone in this world is anti-capitalist it is (besides the usual suspects) the "free marketers" who want to control the market. They've got it in their heads that profit is an entitlement and if they aren't making one, then the system has failed. The system is fine. It's the executives that have failed. If they can't make a profit, it's either because they fucked up, or the market they've entered is simply not proifitable.
I like to play children's songs in minor keys.
"We're all sons of bitches now." --J. Robert Oppenheimer
I don't think this is a bad choice. After all, everybody who's going to get pissed off about this is pissed off at the IOC for its earlier stupidities anyway....
Just reminding you that Samaranch was once a minister in Franco's government in Spain. Thats right, He's a Fascist!!!!
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
In 10 years, the Olympics may find that trying to squeeze out the last dollar has put them behind re-runs of Silver Spoons in terms of viewership and popularity.
As we all know, the Internet is the ideal media upon which to broadcast or publish Olympic data. So it is only fitting that they would choose to ignore the Internet as a valid media outlet.
-This sig intentionally left blank
I didn't watch the olympic$ simply because I didn't read about them on the internet. The sites I visit normally didn't carry coverage, so I never knew who was competing or what competitions were on TV.
I remember and know more names from the 1996 olympic$ than the 2000 games.
Well, this is gonna be a pain in the rear end.
.au, the reason being that they were broadcasting simulcast with AM/FM and the good old USA (MSNBC/AOL/TimeWarner in disguse) didnt want its slaves to be able to listen in on live broadcasts so that it could continue its enslaving consumer propaganda machine. Now where I work is in a basement in a building on the side of a hill, well out of line of sight of the local radio transmission towers, so I regularly listen to the local aunty ABC streaming radio ( http://www.abc.net.au/newsradio/ http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/ ) These radios were forced to stop streaming. I had no hope of listening in to see how my friend was doing in the swimming, I never expected him to win, I just wanted to cheer him on and remember that when we were kids I beat him in the swimming pool. The fact that I couldnt leave my mission critical workstation and walk up the hill and sit with an old trannie for an hour pissed me orrrf. The IOC, just like other international .orgs, are influenced way to heavily by the imperialistic views of the USA.
This last year at the sydney olympics net radio stations were shut down here in
You lost the per/capita medal count anyway, SEPPOS.
Does it go on forever?
It must suck to be a foreigner living in America during the Olympics. The TV broadcasts are understandably America-centric. If said person could use the Internet, (s)he could get just as complete coverage for their own country, be it France, South Africa, Togo, whatever! As the Internet gets larger and more wide-spread, it is absolutely necessary to see its incredible benefits for broadcast. The Olympics are a great example of how the Internet's power could be used to allow everyone to come together and share a great experience. The Games are truly a beautiful thing, showcasing athletes from 199 countries, and America needs to see it for what it is.
I don't know whose idea this statement was, but they will be shooting themselves even 5 years from now. Just think how much things have changed in the last 5 years, and one can only imagine what it'll be like 5 years from now. Truly incredible! In ten years, things could be dramatically different. Some extremely short-sighted people made this decision, and I know they will suffer for it.
I heard this before while the Olympics were on, but the biggest impact will be on small countries that cannot afford TV deals.
The example used at the time was that the tiny island nation of Tonga was getting their TV feeds of the Olympics from New Zealand. So what are the chances they will see any of their own athletes? Zero.
But if someone could put up a Web page to follow all of the Tonga competitors, including stats, pictures, and video, this would be a great benefit for people in that country. But the IOC would make that illegal.
There would be numerous other countries who would be affected this way as well.
The Baron
IANAL, but if I read the BBC's coverage correctly, that is exactly what the IOC is attempting to do. They are "engaging in an agreement to violate [US] law, together with at least one overt act toward that end" -- the definition of conspiracy. And conspiracy is a felony. So if they continue with such action against any US website, the individuals involved should be prosecuted and (when found guilty) jailed, and the corporation either fined or broken up, and in any case not allowed to engage in any business in the US.
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
What a bunch of BULL... The TV stole coverage from news papers... They just made a bad investment, and could loose money .... Should they also be regulated to what they cannot show on
TV because news papers are covering it ???
Are they going to stop athletes from showing footage to their family. This is ABUSE. Not only is it abuse but a leap in the wrong direction.
I bet there next step to "protect" their investment it to ban news papers because they are competition. The problem (ok not really a problem) is that the net has no Board of trustees who have all the power. Thank god no such thing exists, but it could be the only solution....
--=.=-- www.cyber2000.qc.ca
Thougt the Olympics was a public event? I got no radio and no TV.. now how am I gonna see the olypics now huh? :-)
Puff the magic Penguin! The Linux Pimp
--It's Pimptastic!--
Baseball, ha. The US won the gold, but I couldn't find the gold medal game on at all. Sure we got some highlights (once) and smarmy interviews with Lasorda (who BTW did an awesome job managing), and cheesy highlight compilations with music.
I wanted to see the actual game.
Maybe it was on one of the numerous crappy other NBC cable network stations I don't have. I dunno.
Thanks for reading the rant and please excuse all those ***'s...
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
... that we actually need someone to bring that case to court. There's no punishment without prosecution.
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
For them to do this, they must own the copyright. I don't know much about copyright law, but this is how it seems:
For them to own the copyright, they must perform the filming themselves. Unless the players themselves and arena in the games are copyrighted, the olympic games probally has the players sign a waver.
By doing this, the players themselves are now copyrights of the games, and any filming of them are modifications of the original work. But this means that the modifications are still copyrightable, the media company filming must sign a waver. This gives the olympic committee the full copyright. The question is, if audience members are filmed, they are copyrights of themselves, so they should be allowed to have control in fair use, as they had made a modification to the work.
If you appear on television, you should be one of several owners of the film. Linux cannot change licenses because of all of the copyrights within it, (regardless of contraints applied by the GPL)
Copyright law to me seems fscked' if everything and their mother is copyrighted, who owns what?
The net is perfect for an event like the olympics.
I could just see broadcast company:
"Gee lets see, there's multiple events going on at the same time and there's 1 station broadcasting it. How can we fix this?...
I don't know, but let's definitely not use the internet. People might figure out that there is more than the USA in the olympics. Internet Bad, USA good."
bastards
is that I was really looking forward to seeing a .mov of that poor gymnast who just completely missed the horse on her vault and just kept flipping and flipping.... now i've gotta wait ten years for someone to legally make it available.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I take no responsibility for any spelling mistakes in the above post.
hehe and they think thats gonna make any difference? you gotta larf sometimes.
Ah, 2 or 3 years from now, the "web" as we know it will have become archaic. It would be like banning software swapping on BBS.
I hope that this comes to fruition within a ten year time-span so that it will come back to bite the IOC on the ass... If only we could hold them to this decision rather than letting them change their minds in five years when they'd have made more money otherwise.
--
...is the motto of the Olympic movement. It is a perfectly apt one. What could be more human than reaching further, higher or faster? What could me more human than accepting a bribe or stabbing a friend in the back? We should embrace the Olympic movement. It's not about the athletes or what they can do. It's about celebrating what we are. From the mightiest hero to the lowliest troll. Celebrate humanity.
skribe
Blog
Why do I say this? Well, the shadows are cast by reality, and the watchers never get to see reality itself. So it is with the Internet - it, like an huge all-encompassing behemoth, is the shadow cast by reality. It knows no censorship, and cannot be curtailed. The IOC will have to deal with it.
And they will have to bring back the amateur spirit as well.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
(correct me if i:m wrong, of course...my memory for things that I don:t devote much attention to is pretty spotty) CBS's last time out with the 98 winter olympics sucked far harder. NBC actually got around to showing SOME events, and was considerably lighter on the fluff-pieces.
The FBC reports that "Free operating systems will be banned from being used or shown on personal computers for the next decade. The restriction, which is being imposed by Microsoft (MS), is designed to protect the substantial investments made by national software companies who do not want their software markets undermined by free software.