Slashdot Mirror
Olympians Banned From Blogging
nodwick writes "CNN reports that in a bid to protect its lucrative media contracts, the IOC is barring competitors, coaches, and support personnel from writing firsthand accounts of their Olympic experience, on the web or in print, for the duration of the Games. Nor are they allowed to ever post photographs or movies that they've taken, including media of themselves, even after the Games are finished. They've threatened to disqualify anyone that violates their restrictions and sue them for monetary damages. Looks like an effort to clamp down on grassroots, word-of-mouth publicity for the Olympics -- good thing they're not having any problems selling tickets anyways, eh?"
They're only barred from writing for other news organizations, not for personal websites. Blogging isn't banned, according to the article.
Rather, Olympians are prohibited from writing articles and taking photographs for publication by outside news agencies.
This.. doesn't seem nearly so horrid. They can control which credentialed journalists get in, and make sure they've paid their dues and whatnot. The IOC is trying to prevent organizations from skipping past them and hiring on Olympians as insiders.
They don't even want people directing traffic to their site. Check out their policy here Ooops...So much for that rule :)
The IOC. They get countries and commercial interests to spend billions because there's a boatload of money to be made by hosting and covering the games. The Olympics have ALWAYS been a private interest. Ownership of the games has for over a hundred years been controlled by the IOC. The atheletes are members who have agreed to abide by every whim of the IOC in return for being allowed to participate. There's NOTHING surprising or new here.
He's right, they can't stop the athletes from taking pictures of themselves.
It also states on the actual story on CNN, unlike the Slashdot story, that An exception is if an athlete has a personal Web site that they did not set up specifically for the Games.
and
they may not post journals or online diaries, blogs in Internet parlance, until the Games end August 29
So yes, they can post blogs and pictures of themselves AFTER the games are over. The asshat that posted the story here on Slashdot got the story wrong trying to inflame people here.
When in doubt, RTFA
Sad to say: No, taking photos at an event -- for any purpose, including news -- may in fact be covered by a gray-ink "contract" printed on the back of your ticket. It's similar to a the EULAs in shrinkwrapped software.
Sports sanctioning organizations figured out years ago that they're really entertainment companies, creating "intellectual property."
And they do not want competition. So they create exclusive, licensed arrangements for distribution of this "property." This is why you cannot watch of the BBC's Olympics streaming video in the USA, or any of NBC's video streaming anywhere on the Web.
Newspapers are not allowed to shoot video -- even though many newspapers shoot video these days, for their Web sites.
Some sports organizations have gone so far as to claim ownership of basic facts and try to prevent realtime scoring and distribution of data on the Internet.
RTFA.
"An exception is if an athlete has a personal Web site that they did not set up specifically for the Games."
/usr/bin/grep -i -E meaning life.txt
Given this piece of utter cluelessness:
Hyperlink Policy
ATHENS 2004 Organising Commitee for the Olympic Games -Website Hyperlink Policy
For your protection and ours we have established a procedure for parties wishing to introduce a link to the ATHENS 2004 website on their site. By introducing a link to the ATHENS 2004 official Website on your site you are agreeing to comply with the ATHENS 2004 Website General Terms and Conditions. In order to place a link embedded in copy interested parties should:
a) Use the term ATHENS 2004 only, and no other term as the text referent
b) Not associate the link with any image, esp. the ATHENS 2004 Emblem (see paragraph below)
c) Send a request letter to the Internet Department stating:
* Short description of site
* Reason for linking
* Unique URL containing the link (if no unique URL than just the main URL)
* Publishing period
* Contact point (e-mail address)
Once the request has been mailed, interested parties can proceed to include the link and will only receive a response if ATHENS 2004 does not accept the link. All requests should be sent to:
The Internet Department
Iolkou 8 and Filikis Eterias str.
GR-142 34 N. Ionia, Athens
Tel: +30 210 2004 000
Fax: +30 210 2004 800
e-mail: (All information submitted using this e-mail address is governed by the ATHENS 2004 Privacy Policy)
terms@athens2004.gr
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
Because the Olympic Committee are a bunch of money-grubbing slime bags who waant to maintain a monopoly on distributing media of this so-called non-professional competition.
The Olympics have become too bogged down in corruption and conspiracy between committee members on the take, crooked judges and athelete on drugs. You know, I just can't care any more.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I live in Washington State (USA). Here we have the state capital of Olympia, Olympic mountain range, and not to mention America's finest piss water, Olympia Beer. A few years back, the Olympic Committee sued several businesses in Olympia and around the Olympic mountains for using "Olympia" in their name. I can only suspect that Miller Brewing, which owns Olympia Beer, paid them off, but the rest went to court and more or less lost.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Guess the Games have become about money too now.
Nah. The Olympics have become about control . The people running them have this terribly simplistic and fairly out of date belief that the more control they exercise over information about the Olympics, the more money they will make.
I think most everyone here knows what that approach leads to -- nepotism, corruption, stagnation and ultimately a slow rot into dismal irrelevance. The slack ticket sales are just one aspect of that retreat from glory.
Short-term they may make more money, but in the process they are killing the goose that laid the golden egg. No amount of corporatized hype can sell people (or disuade them) on a product like word of mouth. The net is the ultimate mouth. If they don't want to strangle themselves to death, they need to wake up and realize that they need to cultivate the net's communications about the good stuff at the Olympics. Instead, all we get is stories about what a bunch of incompetent, corrupt political bastards are running the organization.
Hey NBC -- I had little interest in the Olympics this time around, your only hope that I would have watched them would be an enticing, personal story that convinced me to follow-up. No, corporate-sanctified and sanitized fluffy news-bite is going to cut it, and now that your business partner has killed any other method for the news to get out, I'll probably never get that chance to hear that compelling story that would make me care. You should ask for a refund from the IOC.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.