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.
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
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.
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).
... 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.
Heaven help you if you're having a conference of some kind in London in the summer of 2012, you might get heavily fined when you try to promote it, even if it has _nothing_ to do with the Olympics, occurs at a different time (well it'd kind of have to since the city will likely be packed because of the Olympics) or date.
If you make games for children better make sure you don't inadvertantly advertise any as summer games, you'll break this law. Again, you could be advertising a glorified lawn sprinkler for kids to play games under in the summer heat but since you "combined" summer and games in your ad the law applies and you're screwed.
I'm sure you'll say "but they'll be reasonable and won't pursue those types of cases" but we already know how well that type of stuff works. You can find many cases of the RIAA & MPAA sending out Cease & Desist letters because they found files containing words that also are used in songs/movies they own but had nothing to do with them. I seem to remember one where the C&D referred to a file that was around 500kb in size, but the MPAA thought it was one of their movies. Rationality won't enter into the enforcement of this law, it'll get the same treatment, anything that looks like it applies will get slapped with at least a lawyergram and likely charges levied. Even if they company ends up off the hook they'll have paid a penalty for defending themselves for doing nothing wrong.
No matter how you look at it this is a very bad law, and very bad precedent. Why should the IOC be given sole ownership of common words beyond Olympic/Olympics? Most of those words are used a lot, and in non-olympic references. Even if you think the words are defensible, including the damn year is insane. I suppose everyone in London will have to be sure to avoid mentioning the year in advertising in 2012 just to be on the safe side.
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 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?
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