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. "
Prime Minister Tony Blair passionately, though unintelligibly, defended the controversial law, saying that "t[h]e I[O]C s [h]ave [it] [q]uite cl[ea]r that [o]ur role [is] [t]o def[en]d the i[n]ve[stm]en[t]s of [l]egiti[mat]e [adve]rti[s]er[s]" who have signed on with the IOC.
Blair also pointed to the limited timeframe of the bill, which only allows surveillance during a two-year period before and after the bill, and said that this showed that public opinion had been considered strongly during the formulation period. "[Wh]at m[or]e [d]o th[ey] wa[nt]?" he asked rhetorically
Free Software Foundation founder and figurehead Richard M. Stallman was unavailable comment. A source close to the activist said that "he's working on renaming GCC in Cyrillic".
Carousel is a lie!
They won't allow The Olympic Hopefuls to use Olympic in their name either. It's amazing that this crap was written in to law. Now the band has to change to "The Hopefuls".
Seriously, I love how they were given powers over a word that was around LONG before "The Games" were.
What a bunch of shit.
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
Yeah? If by "engaging in the unauthorised use of the Olympic Marks" you mean by using them at all, how about you respect the people, and not make such fuchking unreasoanble demands in the first place?
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
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.
So established businesses in London, who have contributed tax dollars for years to the city do not get to benefit from the event being there. The whole reason to have the games in London is so that the IOC can profit? Are businesses that do not sponsor the Olympics banned from doing business with people who show up for the games?
It won't be long until athletes are winning bronze, silver and gold coke cans.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
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.
The international athletic event that takes place where city officials are willing to provide the biggest bribes to the committee is now in London.
or
The international athletic event where people from all countries use performance-enhancing drugs is now in London (and no it's not the Tour de France).
"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.
becasue I expected to have an ungodly heap of money by now.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
... our time traveling friend John Titor said there won't be Olympics after 2004 (dunno if this counts for the '06 winter olympics or not) due to too much conflict over the entire thing. It isn't until 2036 until they try and start it all back up again. I can't wait for this civil war to start, I'm gonna quit my job and head to the hills. I've learned to embrace his prophecy and understand the true meaning of life thanks to Titor.
For those who don't know about John Titor
P.S. Anyone know where I can find that video of him traveling time in his car when he goes BACK TO THE FUTURE?
Sig: I stole this sig.
The USA has had similar laws with respect to the Olympics for some time now.
Not just trademark law, but a special statute protects the Olympic trademarks.
See INTA for more info about this, and of course, the text of 36 USC 220506 itself.
Basically, the USOC owns these words and symbols exclusively, by Act of Congress. The UK is merely "harmonizing" with the USA.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Think about it. Stores all over the country will have signs saying things like: "Get The Goods on a Barely Legal Date!", "Banned Substances at Discount Prices!" and "We Can't Say What We're Selling, but Come In And Get Some!"
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
My plans for www.2012olympicgold.xxx are now officially on hold
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http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/16/1
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.
About a decade ago, when the Olypics were in the US, there was a pizza delivery business in the same city as the games. It was named "Olypic Pizza".
The olypic games' sponsorship branch sued the pants off the small-business owner, to get him to change the name of his business. Eventually he had to relent, after the legal fees nearly bankrupted him.
Why did he fight it? Simple. The store was NAMED AFTER HIM, and he had been in business WITH A TRADEMARK ON "OLYPIC PIZZA" FOR OVER 10 YEARS!
So because the olypic sponsors didn't to eal with the "ambush advertising" this guy represented, he had to give up the business name he had in the area FIRST, his trademark, and couldn't even use his full name during local interviews.
Screw the olympics, and boycott every single damn company that sponsors them!
The solution:
"07YM91CS"
And people said l33t would never catch on.
The London 2012 Olympic organisation has released this template for all companies that have not obtained a sponsorship deal.
Example only:
(Black screen)
(each line of text fades in to white while the line is being read)
Voiceover: "You know why you are here,
We know why you are here,
We cannot say why you are here,
While you are here,
Eat at Hungry Jacks."
(fade in corporate logo)
(fade to black)
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
LOMDON (AP) - A consortium of corporate sponsors today announced the Olympic Letter Management (OLM) initiative to enact mandatory technological measures to prevent uncontrolled use of alphabetic characters to steal valueable Intellectual Property.
"It's outrageuous!" exclaimed OLM spokesperson Bert Kneecapper, "After TrendySportingShoe(TM) spends billions buying Olympic (TM) naming rights, some thieving punk can steal our trademarks using a 20c crayon bought from any corner store!"
Under the OLM initiative, and device capable of reproducing alphabetic characters must implement a mechanism to honour the OLM Tradkemark flag, thereby preventing the device from reproducing trademarked sequences unless a valid licence exists. With time, they intend the service to extend to the enforcement of other text controls, such as micro-payments for use of famous quotes, and retrospective editing of history books.
Bert Kneecapper went on reject crayon manufacturer representations that the scheme was impractical, "Our members lose billions of dollars in un-earned revenue, how can they justify 20c crayons in the face of such flagerant theft?".
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Where's your Olympic* spirit my friend?
* (c), (R), Patent Pending, void where prohibited by law. "Olympic" is a registered trademark of the International Olympic Comittee. All materials and content related to the Olympic Games, including, but not limited to, images, illustrations, text, audio clips, and video clips, are protected by or consist of copyrights, trademarks, service marks, and/or other intellectual property rights ("Intellectual Property"). The Intellectual Property is governed and protected by United States and worldwide copyright, trademark, and/or other intellectual property laws and treaty provisions, privacy and publicity laws, and communications regulations and statutes. The Intellectual Property is owned or controlled by us or other parties that have licensed to us the right to use their Intellectual Property or the right to market their products and/or services (collectively the "IP Providers").
You agree to abide by all additional copyright notices, information, or restrictions contained in any material or content on the Site. Other than as may be expressly permitted by us, in writing, (i) the Intellectual Property is provided solely for your personal, non-commercial use; and you may download any Intellectual Property solely for your personal, non-commercial use, consistent with these Terms, provided that you maintain all copyright and other notices contained in such Intellectual Property. You may not copy, reproduce, republish, upload, post, transmit, distribute, and/or exploit any Intellectual Property in any way (including by e-mail or other electronic means) without our prior written consent or that of the IP Providers - particularly the words 'Olympic', 'games', 'gold', 'silver', 'bronze', 'doping scandal', 'bribery', and other words that are implicit in the Olympic Games. Modification of any Intellectual Property or use of any Intellectual Property for any other purpose is a violation of the copyrights, trademark rights, and other proprietary rights; that includes photoshopped naughty images of Jacques Rogge. The use of any Intellectual Property on any other site or networked computer environment, or maintaining unauthorized links to the Site, is prohibited by these Terms.
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.
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
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