Slashdot Mirror
Businesses To Be Censored on Use of Olympics
pitpe writes "The BBC reports that the proposed London 2012 Olympics Bill bans the use of words related to the Olympics by non-sponsors, including 'Olympic', '2012', 'gold', 'summer' and 'games', amongst others. The bill is aimed at
ensuring corporate sponsors, who have provided £790m of the IOC's £2.25bn marketing revenue over the last four years, will not be deterred by 'ambush marketing' where rivals to the official sponsors try to take advantage, but businesses warn it could make it technically illegal for pubs to use chalkboards to flag up coverage of the Games." From the article: "The London 2012 website has already posted a warning listing a string of Olympic-related words and images that are off limits to all but official sponsors. And advertisers' representatives have criticised the new Olympics bill because they believe it will make it almost impossible for most companies to even acknowledge that the Games are happening without getting into trouble. "
Does this extend to mean that only the sponsoring news organizations can report on olympic news. Sounds tricky.
And the word summer NEVER comes up in normal conversation. Nor does the word 2012 come up either...
I can see it now
Tom: "Hey, I can't wait till the summer of 2012 becau--"
Trademark Police: "Stop right there, infringer!"
Tom: "I didn't do anything wrong!"
Trademark Police: "According to this law you did. Those words are trademarked."
Tom: "How the hell did they trademark a year and a season?!"
Pitiful
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
The IOC has always been very vigorous in defending the branding rights to the games. They even tried to get the Special Olympics to change before the public backlash made them decide to change their minds.
Think about it. If you're Coca-Cola (or some other huge multinational) that's spending 8-9 figures to be the "official whatever of the Olympics", you're going to want to be pretty sure that your competitor isn't going to just say the same thing unofficially. Pretty sure in this case means contractual language with teeth. Hence, the IOC turning around and doing the same thing.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
See 36 USC 220506... the US has had the same law for a long time. The Olympic commitee has even tried to be quite heavy-handed about it, on more than one occasion.
How about we just cut the crap and stop trying to stop people from simply living. This is common sense; why are we letting corporate sponsors yet again judge where we can use common words in every day life because they're deemed competitive or inapprpriate? I don't even mean the words like "summer" or "games". If I want to throw up a sign that celebrates the Olympics, I should be able to for whatever reason.
Maybe we can start a new trend of just selling our human rights for profit! Because right now they're just being stolen.
No kidding.
Other banned words include games, medals, gold, silver, bronze, 2012, sponsor, summer
I guess a jewelry store owner would be forbidden from advertising: "Come and see our great selection of gold and silver on sale this starting this summer. No payments until 2012."
This is positively ridiculous.
"And advertisers' representatives have criticised the new Olympics bill because they believe it will make it almost impossible for most companies to even acknowledge that the Games are happening without getting into trouble."
Good. It's time to kill of the olympics.
A event like this only means something when the organization running it isn't corrupt from top to bottom. They have the nerve to tell ticket holders that "You can't drink Dr. Pepper here, but you can buy a $20 can of Coke! Coke is it!". The "Olympic Village" is now corporate-sponsored Sodom and Gomorrah. Home improvement companies spend millions on advertisements to say that they are proud to support their olympians ("You've got no marketable skills outside of athletics, so as long as you work 9-to-5 for minimum wage, we've got your back!").... I'm absolutley not surprised to see London sell themselves out by grabbing the Olympic bid.
Now, if nobody CAN mention the Olympics, perhaps they'll just go away. We'll all be better off for it.
He who has the gold, makes the rules.
BTW, At current exchange rates, this rule was bought at a price of 108 standard tons of gold. I was hoping to see how many Libraries of Congress that would fill, but that's only 181 cu. ft. Kinda disappointing really.
When you consider that Australia (the city of Melbourne, Australia strictly speaking), has the highest population of Greek folks of any city in the world outside of Greece (and Sydney isn't too far behind) then you can bet your bottom dollar that there's going to be a fair swag of small "Mom-and-Pop" businesses, corner stores, etc with some form of 'Olypic' in the name.
Our newspapers regularly carried stories of small businesses being steamrollered by IOC Corporation and its hired thugs (by hired thugs, I mean the government of the host country).
Another common story was the officials and security being briefed to look out for spectators and general public wearing promotional gear (hats, t-shirts, etc) from companies that competed with official sponsors. A coca cola t-shirt for example would leave you being offered the choice of handing it over, covering up, or going home.
Despite all the talk of leaving town for the duration, etc, etc, I did end up sticking around (but I didn't get involved in any of the events organised by IOC Corporation). Strangely, Sydney was a really really nice place to be for those two weeks. Many people dreaded the five ringed circus coming to town, but by the time they packed up their tents and their wagons and rolled out of town again, many of the same were sad to see them go.
That ain't no excuse for steam rollering thousands of little people in the name of corporate greed though. IOC Corporation has NOTHING to do with sport, excellence, peace, tradition or ANY of that nice stuff - it's about corporations and hired governments pumping the people for money.
Me, I make careful note of the companies that sponsor IOC Corporation, and put them on my personal do not buy list for life.
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No doubt. The way the Olympics have been run in recent memory is sad. They guard anything that has to do with the olympics so closely, any spirit of friendly compitition has been lost.
I remember a few years ago, atheletes weren't able to keep and publish an online journal about their experiences, so fans could get an unspoiled perspective of what the atheletes saw. That's bordering on insane.
To make matters worse, television coverage of the games is miserable. In an hour of coverage, you'll get 15 minutes of commericals, 25 minutes of sappy "human interest" stories (This is young Nadia's first olympic games *cue heart strings music* she had to face a lot of challenges to get here, because just two years before the games, her belowed cat Mittens died from old age), 10 minutes of "what you'll see later on" and mindless chatter of the comentators ("You know, Bob, the sun that comes out over Athens during the day is the exact same sun that shines over America." "No, I didn't know that. That's so fascinating, especially since America is so far away", and a whopping 10 minutes of actual coverage of atheletic compitition.
I'm not kidding.
Essentially, the commericalism of the games have robbed it of its soul, and America's TV coverage has made it unwatchable. And forget about trying to enjoy the opening ceremonies; the commentators must be paid by the word, because they don't know when the shut up.
The Internet is generally stupid