Slashdot Mirror
YouTube Stands Up To IOC Over Free Tibet Video
Ian Lamont writes "The International Olympic Committee has withdrawn a DCMA takedown notice that targeted a two-minute long YouTube video of a Students for a Free Tibet protest at the Chinese consulate in New York. The video shows protesters gathering outside the building at night and projecting images of the Olympic symbol, 'tank man,' Tibetan riot footage and clips of victims of the Chinese police crackdown in Tibet. After receiving the request, YouTube contacted the IOC and asked if it really planned to pursue a claim. The IOC retracted the notice and the video was reposted within hours. Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society praised YouTube for 'going out of its way to do more than it's required to do under the law to protect free expression.'"
for the first person to post a link to the video so that I don't have to look for it myself!
'going out of its way to do more than it's required to do under the law to protect free expression.'
AKA
'going out of its way to do more than it's required to do under the law to protect their image.'
Aside from using the logotype (which, in my opinion, was listed as 'fair use'), what exactly did the IOC plan to do with this? And why are they following China's commie propaganda?
Full Tilt
At 0:56, what am I looking at?
And it's so terribly inconvenient that they deserve praise for it?
Lowered Expectations.
Doesn't sound noble to me. Sounds like they asked "are you really going to follow through with this claim, or will we have to put it back up?" instead of saying "to hell with your claim, this is free expression."
I mean, not keeping a clip down because someone decided on a whim they didn't like it is kind of good. But I don't think it's the reason we thought YouTube was putting it back up.
Personally I give Google kudos for doing this. If it were any other company they wouldn't have done anything and would have stated that they will not repost it unless a counter DMCA is issued. I applaud Google for taking the extra step of actually contacting the IOC and asking them if they truly want to pursue this or are they just trying to pander to the Chinese. The Chinese are horrible and sure they can make a pretty show but they have total disregard for human rights.
If this were Microsoft or Yahoo (and yahoo has pandered to the Chinese many many times) they would have waited for a counter DMCA or just ignore it and let another site deal with it.
So good job not being evil
*Cheers*
and I swear the Chinese's pretty little show doesn't change anything.
Good on YouTube, good on Google!
Fuck you, chilling effect.
China's propaganda hasn't been about communism for a long time.
"Socialism with Chinese characteristics" is a wildcard because it can mean just about anything. Currently it is defined as socialist market economy.
Agreed. And in fact it is a dictatorship from a political point of view, combined with a government-boosted turbo-capitalism.
The IOC thinks it owns Tibet now? Are they crazy? Go youtube!
___
No power in the 'verse can stop me
After starting to seriously lose faith in Google living up to their "Don't be evil" policy, I have to take back what I said about "Don't be evil, unless it involves China". Well done Google. We are holding you to your own high standards. Don't slip too much! Credibility is a hard thing to recapture.
free the US? After the last 8 years China and Russia aren't looking as bad as they used.
So Google is not so much doing the right thing, but making the tough decision whether to go along with old, obnoxious powerful men who will soon be history, or to keep alongside its demographic.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
There's another explanation, which is that a lot of symbols surrounding the Olympics are trademarked. And, in the US, trademark law requires that you take steps to protect your trademark, or you risk losing some or all of your rights to it. It's debatable how much that has to do with this case, since at least one of the Olympic symbols (the interlocking rings) is protected by a special statute that falls outside normal rules for this sort of thing, but it could be a factor.
does IOC have to do with Tibet anyway? To my way of thinking there is no and will be no relationship unless the 4012 games is to be held there. Geez IOC get a real life and worry about your brief - to provide olympic games every 4 years. Otherwise shut the fuck up!
Hmmm, on second thought, I think they already know :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7562669.stm
Now they need to start doing this outside of their country too. Wouldn't be too hard, especially since you can trivially get past American border security as incidents keep illustrating.
Think how trivial something like this would be for the chinese government (btw the nature of the substance is confirmed, and the culprit is a somali muslim that illegaly entered US via the canadian border) :
http://cbs4denver.com/local/burnsley.hotel.death.2.793573.html
Let's just think America keeps buying. More ... and more ... and more.
Aside from using the logotype (which, in my opinion, was listed as 'fair use'), what exactly did the IOC plan to do with this? And why are they following China's commie propaganda?
Not sure, but had it not been for the IOC's intervention, who would have seen or even known about the video to begin with?
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
It's not that much of a dictatorship. The people get to vote on which CP member gets in. It's a bit like the US really, but with one less party.
This is explained very clearly in the article. The clip was posted with a title suggesting that it was footage of the opening ceremony, which would mean that it was protected by IOC copyright. The IOC appear to have issued the DMCA notice based on the title without actually looking at the video. Apparently there is a lot of stuff on You Tube that genuinely is under IOC copyright and they just got a bit sloppy in trying to find all of it.
the see "free tibet" and just say "no it isn't"
It's not that much of a dictatorship. The people get to vote on which CP member gets in. It's a bit like the US really, but with one less party.
:-)
Slipping shoelaces ?
People only noticed the fake big-foot, little did they know China is a fake-communist country.
It's a bit like the US really
Except in the US you can criticize the party in power without being arrested and hauled away by the cops.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I don't quite understand the relation between the Tibetans and the Olympics. It is just a sports event and it has only 1/200 Chinese element in it, among the 200+ nations. The game will last about 10 more days. So after that are we going to see, Nike, G.M., MacDonald, Rolex, Gucci, Kentucky chicken etc... protest along with their Lion flag? If they are after the Chinese govt, why drag with the Olympics.
The IOC have been excessively aggressive in protecting their trademarks for years. The 2004 games in Athens had them threatening every restaurant or other venue with the word 'Olympic' in its name - apparently they were unaware that Olympus is in Greece and things have been named after it for several thousand years there. In the run-up to the 2012 Olympics, there have been laws passed here in the UK granting extra protection to their trademarks.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
. . . Tibetans are risking their lives and liberty to fight Chinese oppression.
Although I applaud the recent demonstration by western supporters of Tibet in China at the Olympic Games, I think they and we knew that at most they risked a few days in jail and deportation. China wouldn't dare treat them the same way they treat Tibetans while the whole world was watching.
I'll have a lot more respect for pro-Tibetan protesters when they put their own lives and liberty at risk in support of a Free Tibet.
Sorry, but bumper stickers ain't gonna do it.
What?
Google shouldn't have removed the video in the first place. At least, that's what I refused to do when I received an obviously invalid DMCA request for one of my own customers site.
DMCA requests are being sent out like spam. And when I say spam, I mean that they're being sent out by automated scripts with no human supervision whatsoever. And in many documented cases, DMCA requests are being sent out by people who know damn well the DMCA doesn't apply -- but they just want to have some embarrassing materials taken down as quickly as possible.
So if a human looks at it, like a Google employee must have obviously done to tell the IOC about it, and says 'no', it's obviously an invalid DMCA request, then the video shouldn't be removed -- or if it was removed already -- it should be posted back right away -- before the IOC is even contacted.
Now I realize Google is being sued by copyright holders for not being quick enough to respond to them, but we need to sue Google on the other side of the issue to make sure they don't go too far in complying with the legal threats of these automated DMCA requests. If we don't do this, we'll certainly lose our rights to immediate free speech, and *immediate* free speech is important -- or at least it's gaining more importance every single day -- since sites like YouTube often beat out other traditional outlets in getting fresh same-day footage of armed conflicts, rigged elections, and bloody protests.
s, there have been laws passed here in the UK granting extra protection to their trademarks.
And we all know the IOC is nice & fair & reasonable, just like the RIAA and MPAA in regards to copyright claims.
Really, why does the IOC get "extra" protection in regards to trademarks compared to anyone else? What makes the IOC so special? I have grown tired of these organizations that seem to think they are more important than everyone else, trampling over what they see fit.
There's the ultimate battle royale for you: A pirated MP3 song by band called "The Olympix".
It may have 1/200 Chinese athletes, but it has 100% of Chinese commercial interests, and more importantly to the billions of magpies watching, it's shifting attention away from the great vices of the Chinese government, painting them as a happy friendly internationally-welcoming country.
There's a reason China is feared, they have a ton of American money, and they have the morals of Hitler, Stalin and Hussein all chopped up into one big bad cloak of violent oppression.
Unless you like the idea of being dragged off to jail for blogging... hey everybody's different, right ? :P
-Billco, Fnarg.com
People who live in glass countries shouldn't throw bricks. In the US you don't have to critize anybody to be arrested and hauled away by the cops [illinoistimes.com].
What's your point? Governmental officials abuse their power? Nobody would deny that. The difference between the US and China is that we have a free press that can investigate those abuses of power and bring them to light. In China they can't even get answers as to why their schools collapsed and killed thousands of their children during the recent earthquakes.
Remember that Democracy is the worst form of Government ever -- except for all those others that have been tried from time to time.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
We shouldn't blame them for threatening legal action based on a text tag without even viewing the supposedly offending video?
But text tags are subject to trademark law. Come to think of it, I applaud Google for standing up to someone who tried to use copyright law to enforce a trademark.
they took it down first, that's something that should have *NEVER EVER* happened, DMCA or not. Bad laws are there to be broken, the DMCA is as bad as it gets.
MP3 Search Engine
The point is that this Washington guy pissed off the wrong people. As to the free press issue, American reporters go to jail over politics, too. The one linked refused to name a source; the right to free speech is supposed to be the right to not speak as well. You can't have a free press if people are afraid to blow the whistle.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
As to the free press issue, American reporters go to jail over politics, too [cnn.com]
No, American reporters go to jail for refusing to testify in front of a Grand Jury. Bit of a difference there. I would argue that we need a press shield law on the Federal level (my state has one) but there's still a difference between going to jail for contempt of court and being whisked away for investigating Governmental abuses or corruption.
the right to free speech is supposed to be the right to not speak as well
Actually, no, there is no right not to speak if you are subpoenaed to testify. You have a right against self-incrimination but if you are offered immunity (i.e: nothing you say can be used against you) then you don't have the right to refuse to testify. This is based on hundreds of years of legal precedent and tradition.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The press in America isn't free, its perpetually sitting on the auction bloc..... and the few people who still pay attention to the main-stream media are outbid by the US government. I won't bother linking to a bunch of stories about the various scandals the last few years involving officials bribing reporters, FOX news parroting the Bush administrations talking points, billions "missing" from the DOD September 10 2001, etc. Do your own fricken homework.
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
google.cn doesn't display results that the chinese government don't like.
As I understand it, google.cn blocks results that it knows Golden Shield's great firewall will block, and it lets the user know that this has happened. If you can use a proxy to get around the great firewall, then you can use the same proxy to get to google.com.
Quite honestly, the IOC brand has been so diluted since 1936 by its association with nasty dictatorships, corruption and junk food that the inhabitants of Mt. Olympus should call and ask for their good name back.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
... a lot of symbols surrounding the Olympics are trademarked. And, in the US, trademark law requires that you take steps to protect your trademark, or you risk losing some or all of your rights to it.
People keep saying this, but I don't think that trademark law says quite what you're claiming.
News clips routinely show city scenes with easily-recognizable brand names all over the place. To use the traditional auto analogy, you never hear of Ford or GM attempting to block broadcast of videos that show cars with logos visible in the background. This is not in any sense a legal challenge to those trademarks. Not even when the company is part of the news story. If there are workers picketing an auto plant over some contract dispute, news photographers will even try to get the building's logo into the shot to help illustrate where the news originated. The broadcast and print media routinely show such shots with no worries about infringement claims.
Claiming that the five-circle Olympic logo's trademark status is threatened by inclusion in a new video of a political demonstration is about as bogus as you can get. This it absolutely fair use, and there's no legal threat to anyone's "intellectual property". Claiming such a threat is merely a heavy-handed excuse for censorship.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
The press in America isn't free, its perpetually sitting on the auction bloc
I love how you talk about the press as though it's some monolithic entity. The press consists of everything from the major networks (CBS, ABC, NBC), cable news networks (MSNBC, Fox, CNN), news magazines (Time, Newsweek), other magazines (The New Yorker, The Atlantic, etc), PBS, NPR, the AP, Reuters, blogs, newspapers, blah, blah, blah, blah. Hell, that doesn't even count the numerous foreign press (the BBC, Le Monde, etc) sources that are only a few mouseclicks away in the information age.
You don't like what the mainstream news is covering? Get your news from somewhere else. I get my news from a combination of almost everything that I listed above. The nightly news broadcasts are good for a quick snapshot of the major events of the day. PBS does a good job of covering a handful of stories in depth and generally pays attention to parts of the world (Africa) neglected by the big networks. Most of the news magazines are worth reading through. Foreign newspapers and websites are a good source of news about events not well covered by American media or for a look at how the rest of the world views a particular issue.
The information is out there for those inclined to turn off Fear Factor long enough to look for it. There is no excuse for not being informed in this day and age other than laziness.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I'm bagging the US electoral system, which is rigged to have 2 main parties. No preferences or runoff votes mean that voting for the minor parties is a wasted vote. Freedom of speech is a great thing for the US. There are some problems with the US press, but the only way to fix them would require making the US a dictatorship, and that doesn't seem like a great idea.
So in the same line of argument, Nike, Gucci, Apple, Microsoft, HP, Coca Cola, MacDonalds, ..... should be slapped in the face because "they are shifting attention away from the great vices of the Chinese government, paint them as happy friendly internationally welcoming country" too. Chinese should put on rubber shoes, dress in dark cloths, use only abacus, drink chinese tea and eat only chow mien ....
The questions why just pick on IOC. Not anyone else?
This is based on hundreds of years of legal precedent and tradition.
So is bullfighting. Doesn't make it right. We must assert our right to resist all authority. Because we DO have that right. "Contempt of court" is a very convenient way of locking up "undesirables", and is frequently used for the explicit purpose of whisking people away. Grand juries can be quite politically corrupt also. As is usually the case when dealing with reporters and the "war on drugs". They have no right to force me to do anything.
What?
I've been wondering what would happen if the Olympics were held in Seattle. There's a bunch of mountains 50 miles west of the city called "the Olympics", though "the Olympic Mountains" would be the more formal name. Would the IOC demand that the range be renamed? Because of the mountains, there are a number of Olympic-themed place names in the general area. Would they all be forced to change their names? Some of the smaller eateries would probably just laugh and refuse to change.
Maybe this issue would suffice to reject Seattle as an Olympics venue.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Vimeo has stood up to the Church of Scientology and the IOC. Their commitment to free speech is absolute. They are far more worthy of our support than YouTube, which regularly knuckles under to media companies whispering "Boo!" in their ears. Vimeo will not allow you to upload your rips of Battlestar Galactica episodes but they will stand by your right to free speech. Plus videos look and sound WAY BETTER there.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
While I'm always happy to flame the DMCA's anticircumvention aspects, I've always thought the idea behind the takedown notice aspect, is basically fair: it either puts the two parties who are in conflict in contact with each other, or removes the conflict, and gets the ISP out of the line of fire. But this kind of situation shows that the implementation of takedown notices, is still brain damaged.
IOC asserted they hold the copyright on the video, and Youtube took damaging action against the real copyright holder as a direct result of that. There should be some consequence to IOC's fraudulent notice.
Whoa, whoa, "fraudulent"? Well, that's the question. The truth is that IOC didn't think about what they were doing at all. It's inconceivable that a human looked at the video and then that same human sent the notice. (If that happened, then it really would be fraud, since there would clearly have to be a deceptive intent.) And that's the problem: a human should take responsibility for the notice. This shouldn't be done automatically unless someone is damn sure their automated process is foolproof -- sure enough to put their own ass on the line.
And that's not happening. The takedown notice procedure needs to be amended to include some consequences for "extremely wrong" (I don't know the legal term for that) harrassment. I mean situations where it's plainly obvious that copyright infringement has not occurred.
The fix might be as simple as making the part where the lawyer asserts he represents the copyright holder "under penalty of perjury" mean what all laymen think it means.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
So is bullfighting. Doesn't make it right
You are comparing bullfighting with societal attempts at obtaining justice? That's the underlying reason that our judicial system has the right to compel testimony. Do you really think a witness to a murder (or any crime for that matter) should be able to refuse to testify?
Grand juries can be quite politically corrupt also
Any institution made up of human beings can be corrupted. But I'd rather live in a system that requires the consent of the community (via the jury process) to take away my freedom than one that requires the consent of some appointed bureaucrat or judge.
They have no right to force me to do anything.
Actually the community does have a right to force you to do certain things. It can force you to testify in a judicial proceeding. It can force you to serve on a jury. This is the balance of power between society and the individual that has been tweaked and honed over hundreds of years. You are free to dislike it but the fact that you can voice your opinions against the status quo places you light-years ahead of your friends living in China or Russia. I wish people would remember that.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
No, no, no, no, no. The Olympic symbol used in the video are protected by treaty and by statute. Unlike ordinary trademarks, its status cannot be lost that way. So the IOC does not have that excuse. Even if they did, in order to use the DMCA they had to commit perjury and say that they owned the copyright to the video; that's not reasonable enforcement of trademark.
It had a misleading title, which caused the IOC to issue a takedown notice before it confirmed that the content matched the description. I would do the same thing, probably.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
You seem to be missing my point, which is not that I don't 'like' the news or how mainstream media delivers it.... its that news is a business, and that other entities with far more money determine the shape of the news. The old model was report good story = sell more newspapers. The new model is propaganda for hire. None of the news sources you mentioned are immune from this.
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
...societal attempts at obtaining justice?...
Or lynch mobs and kangaroo courts? Try to remember that we have more people locked up in prison than they do. Your Grand Juries are pretty selective. If they were attempting to obtain justice, we might actually see some.
What?
You seem to have a rather rosy view of journalism in the past. Ever read about yellow journalism? William Hearst's activities in the run up to the Spanish-American war? The media has always been vulnerable to corruption, propaganda and particularly sensationalism (it sells copy). This isn't a new phenomena by any means.
All you can do is obtain your news from a broad range of different media and media outlets. They all have their vested interests, the big one being making money (for the for-profits) but if you obtain your news from diverse sources you'd be surprised at how much you can learn and how well informed you'll be.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
*shrug*, at no point have I claimed that our system is perfect. The biggest problem with our system is people that neglect their civic responsibilities. Why bother staying informed and holding public officials accountable when the new season of survivor starts soon?
Still, I'll say it again: Democracy is the worst form of Government, except for all those others that have been tried from time to time.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Do you really think a witness to a murder (or any crime for that matter) should be able to refuse to testify?
Yes. I do not agree with drug laws, and if I were on a jury in a drug case (well, I wouldn't be because the prosecuting attorney wouldn't let it happen) I could not in good conscience vote "guilty", no matter what the evidence.
If I were called to testify against someone selling pot, I would be in a very bad place indeed; I would have a moral mandate to refuse to testify, but if I did refuse I would face incarceration myself. That just isn't right.
It's even worse with a murder trial. If forced to testify my choices would be a) refuse to testify, and be incarcerated myself, b) testify and be murdered myself, or c) join the "witless protection program" and lose my job, my friends, my family, my possessions, and everyone and everything I love. This despite the fact that I, myself, had done nothing wrong whatever.
If my child committed murder I would go to jail rather than testify. Oddly, you can be compelled to testify against your child or your parent but not your wife. This, too, is wrong. The fifth amendment gives the criminal the right to remain silent, the witness should have the same right.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
You can...until you do so at one of the primary conventions and do it outside of the little, barbed-wire box they put you into. Then you end up in a warehouse full of cages.
1 is the square root of all evil.
What I don't understand in this discussion is why the American on the street is so hot to criticise China, today. Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that China is fifty or a hundred years behind the US on human rights issues. For much of its history, the US has been fifty or a hundred years behind Britain in similar ways. But the US has been proud during that time of the rate at which it has advanced. To take one obvious example, the US is proud of having abolished slavery in (I think) 1865, despite that England ruled against it in 1772, even before the American revolution. Back in the present, China's current rate of progress on social and economic fronts is, I think unarguably, an order of magnitude greater than the US has ever accomplished. Why, then, are they the bad guys, when to all appearances they are doing the most good, in progress times population, perhaps of any nation ever existing on the planet?
Yes, to accomplish this, China is making a lot of what appear to be very, very calculated compromises. Taken in isolation, these compromises frequently appear ugly, cynical and sometimes (for instance on the environmental front) terrifyingly risky. But could you do better, starting from where they are starting? Could the US government do better? Nobody really believes any government when they say, 'in five years we will achieve this.' But look at your scorecard. Is the US truly keeping its promises better than China does?
The biggest high level criticism you can level at the Chinese government in recent history is that, OMG, they have abandoned the ideals of Communism. The US has been compromising on some of its political ideals lately, too. Tell me honestly: which direction of change do you prefer?
The point at which you, the parent, joined the discussion, was democracy and the free press. Take a step back and look at contemporary America. Are you certain that the last two elections represent the will of the people? Are you certain that what your news media are telling you about, let's say, the governments of the US and China are unbiased, unscripted, and intellectually and factually honest? I want to be very clear. I am emphatically not saying China is at this moment better than the US. But I am saying that they seem to be working on it, very hard indeed. The US, of late, is all talk. And a lot, a lot of America's recent 'progress' is frankly retrograde.
Yes. I do not agree with drug laws, and if I were on a jury in a drug case (well, I wouldn't be because the prosecuting attorney wouldn't let it happen) I could not in good conscience vote "guilty", no matter what the evidence.
That's your right and one of the beauties of the jury system. I'm opposed to the war on drugs and would probably consider jury nullification as well, though I would take the facts of the case into account -- I wouldn't nullify a charge of violence for example.
The fifth amendment gives the criminal the right to remain silent, the witness should have the same right.
I'm sorry but I disagree. The accused (not a criminal until conviction) has the right to remain silent so they don't have to incriminate themselves. The witness has an obligation to tell the community what happened. In this scenario I think that the needs of the many (society) outweigh the needs of the one (the individual), particularly in the case of the murderer example that you gave.
In the case of the War on Drugs..... no easy answer there. If you really believe that earnestly in your principles then stand up for them and refuse to testify. Be prepared to accept the consequences of doing so however.
If my child committed murder I would go to jail rather than testify
That's a bit of a blanket statement. If your child was the unabomber would you really keep silent and let him keep blowing people up? He was turned in by his brother as you recall. Couldn't have been easy for him. But I think the obligation to society outweighs the obligation to the family member in that instance.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
You seem to be missing my point, which is not that I don't 'like' the news or how mainstream media delivers it.... its that news is a business, and that other entities with far more money determine the shape of the news. The old model was report good story = sell more newspapers. The new model is propaganda for hire. None of the news sources you mentioned are immune from this.
You obviously have no knowledge of the history of news reporting in the U.S. (and I am betting that the rest of the world has similar things in its history). The old model was select a policy outcome that the paper's owner wanted to have happen, report news stories that inflame the public in favor of said policy, profit. See "yellow journalism"
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Why bother staying informed and holding public officials accountable when the new season of survivor starts soon?
Well, right there you nailed it. It really does boil down to us. And ultimately the same goes for the Chinese.
What?
If I were called to testify against someone selling pot, I would be in a very bad place indeed
If my child committed murder I would go to jail rather than testify.
You know, you're generally in the ethical clear when you simply tell the truth. I think you're over-complicating things... and that can be dangerous when it comes to morals.
Eh, I cut the Chinese more slack than I do us. The Chinese have tried before and been smacked down by their Government. We don't even bother to try. Sad.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Actually, I have to say that next time I have the choice between Coke and Pepsi I'll have the Pepsi despite the fact that I'd normally have preferred Coke based on its taste. If Coke is going to be an official sponsor of the Commie Olympics, I'm sorry but yeah, I have a problem with that.
Maybe you'll say I'm being trivial and it's stupid to make a big deal over it: well, that may be true. However, I'm only one person, so I'm really pretty trivial to them in the grand scheme of things. It's not at all over-reacting for me, as one person, to boycott companies X, Y, and Z for what seems like a trivial thing to most people. If these companies (Coke, Nike, etc) are going to do controversial stuff, they're going to piss people off, and if enough people are pissed off, they'll collectively have an impact. It's my duty to express my indignation; one pissed off person won't make a difference but enough of them will. If everyone just said "I won't speak out because I'm too insignificant to make a difference", there wouldn't be a collective voice at all.
The IOC still seems to think it owns all use of the word 'olympic'. http://news.opb.org/article/usoc-cracks-down-olympic-peninsula-winery/ I wish somebody could explain to them that owning the copyright to the games does not entitle them to prevent others from either using their symbol to protest them, or from using locale names (like the olympic penninsula in WA) that predate the founding of the modern olympic games.
If there's one thing I won't stand for, it's intolerance.
If only I had mod points...
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
The point is, WTF does the Olympics do with the Tibetans. That is the question. If the pro-Tibetans movement want to protest, it is the Chinese government. Not the Olympics. If they are after the Olympics for some free publicity, fine. Just look at the effect of their action. Could you find their banner drawing any supporter. Sorry, there isn't much. And if they want people's attention, they should have known that other ethnic groups such as the Manchus, Mongols, Muslim and other minorities also suffered during the Cultural revolution. The banner should be written as 'FREE CHINA' instead of 'FREE TIBET'. The remaining question of why the Tibetans are way behind their fellow citizens in other parts of the country. May be you should study more.
I'm not sure if you saw the section in the clip using the Olympic rings as handcuffs. My guess is that is what they're upset about, not just the Olympic rings up on the buildings.
I don't know if it's legal or not, but I could see how any org would be upset if their org logo was used to handcuff someone.
See the clip at 1:11 to see the shot I'm talking about:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j60x3C43Qao
I'm not saying it's right or wrong one way or another, just pointing out a fact not everyone might have noticed.
Nope. The fifth protects everyone, criminal (you perhaps meant defendant?) or not, against self-incrimination. And since they don't know what your answer would be, they can't prove it's not incriminating, so you don't have to answer any question for which any answer could be incriminating.
No, the point is why the fuck are we having the Olympics in China to begin with?
I'd say it's a parody, which falls under fair use.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
It protects the innocent and the guilty alike. When the defendant pleads the fifth but is convicted, then the fifth has protected the criminal, IMO as it should.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Hmmm ... I wonder if there's a Fair Use Law in China. Not that this would have much impact on youtube servers in the US.
Actually, I tried to look up "fair use" in a couple of online Mandarin dictionaries. The closest I came was two chars pronounced gong1 yong4, but that means "for public use". My Mandarin is pretty feeble, though, so maybe some other slashdotter know.
(And when will we be permitted to use UTF-8 on /.? For at least the next couple weeks, it could be useful to be able to include a bit of Chinese text here. Then we'll forget all about them, but there'll be lots of other non-Western countries whose news stories we won't be able to quote literally. ;-)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Unless I've missed something, the DMCA deals exclusively with copyright infringement. The linked rings symbol is trademarked by the IOC. There is no copyright in it, and certainly no copyright in the linked-handcuff symbol used in the Free Tibet video. Even granting that the IOC might have a case for trademark infringement, what entitles them to issue a DMCA takedown notice? Indeed, a DMCA takedown notice requires the issuer to attest under penalty of perjury that the issuer holds the copyright in the work in question. Did the IOC or its lawyer not commit perjury in issuing this notice?
It is all nice to claim that Youtube is standing up to freespeech but they are really only doing so in limited cases. Most glaringly Youtube is working with Turkey to make a new version of Youtube that is censored according to Turkish law. See http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=149182&bolum=105 Turkey cannot handle even minimal criticism of Ataturk and Youtube is giving them exactly what they want. I understand what Youtube is doing here. One can make the argument that exposure to the freespeech will eventually lead to less censorship. Also, Youtube obviously has its own financial incentives. But let's not pretend that Youtube and its parent Google are great champions of freespeech. They fight when they know they are very likely to win but don't otherwise.
Myself, no idea - I don't have remotely enough information to decide. However, I did find the Skeptoid Episode 4111 interesting in that it at least asks the question.
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
we need to sue Google on the other side of the issue to make sure they don't go too far in complying with the legal threats of these automated DMCA requests
What legal theory do you have that Google needs to do anything at all with your video? Does its ToS have a DMCA-protection clause?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
That's a very dangerous thing to do
Sometimes doing the right thing isn't the same as doing the expedient thing.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I know that their heart is in the right place, but what does this kind of protest actually accomplish? There has got to be more we can do.
"Any institution made up of human beings can be corrupted."
Yeah, that's why we be better off without them. Democracy is just a facade of legitimacy over what is essentially the same old oppressive, evil system.
"Actually the community does have a right to force you to do certain things."
No they don't, I have a natural ability to refuse to do anything they would seek to compel me to do. It's just that the "community" is so corrupt and evil that if I refuse to bend to their will, they will lock me in prison. Fuck that.
"You are free to dislike it but the fact that you can voice your opinions against the status quo places you light-years ahead of your friends living in China or Russia. I wish people would remember that."
Right, I'm sure that makes people feel a lot better when they are sitting in prison but have committed no real crime.
also, in the context of testimony under oath, free speech is significantly limited. In normal, public life you can lie to your hearts content, do it on the witness stand you go to jail. So in that sense, yes... when you are subpoenaed you have just as much right to speak as to not speak.
I hope I'm wrong...
Last night I saw a nike advertisement on one of the CCTV olympic channels during prime time. The ad features the Chinese athlete Liu Xiang preparing for a race. He's dressed in Orange. The cheering crowd at the stadium are waving orange and yellow flags. Spectators in orange are the most visable. The ad moves to a street view where a large crowd is watching on a bigscreen TV. The scene is grey and white but the backround is dominated by a single orange flag being waved in the background. China in these ads is depicted as being grey with orange clearly the dominant color lighting the scenes. This occours again in the student dorm where everything is grey except for a students shirt and orange lined bunk. I'd go on but I think it's an important exercise people to go through to freeze frame the many scenes and see how people are being manipulated. www.nike.com.cn
This sort of subliminal advertising is quite common in movies and even tv shows. One of the more obvious cases would be the heavily Pepsi sponsored "Baby Plan" featuring Jackie Chan. While the movie is busting with product placement a deeper theme of colour placement is prevalent.
Jackie's apartment is pepsi blue as is the exterior which is covered by not one but two Pepsi graffiti tags. The hospital which Jackie visits has a light blue theme with nurse uniforms to match. The coversation scene takes place with a refridgerator full of pepsi as the backdrop. Generally nurses wear white hence light blue was a editorial choice as are the many light blue wearing extras throughout the movie (Similar instances can all be seen throughout the Nike orange adds). Color placement is a very subversive method to gain appeal or familiarity with a theme.
But pepsi can do whatever they like in the name of advertising, it's not against the law. What makes this Nike orange campaign so disturbing is that an international company is subverting a culture and has taken a political stance.
Once again I hope i'm wrong and this is just a mistake. Why are the Chinese basketball players wearing orange uniforms? The color may seem very similar to red but compared with the real (Nike) team uniforms the colors aren't even close.
I'm sending out this email as a call for anyone to help me solve this matter as I can't read or write chinese and may be missing the point.
And why are they following China's commie propaganda?
Huh? Why would you even need to ask this question? The whole purpose of the modern Olympics is to spread nationalist propaganda. The IOC are just doing their job. Did you think it is supposed to be about a sporting competition or something?
... and then they built the supercollider.
The Olympics is "just a sports event"? You poor, naive fellow. Sport is just the tool used to distract people from what's really happening. Do you think the 1936 Berlin Olympics was just a sporting event?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Maybe it was because the video was titled Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony. I doubt the IOC actually checked every single video that had the words "Beijing Olympics" in it, and just did a mass takedown.
So if one of your friends is hiding from someone who wants to murder them, and the would-be murderer asks you where they're hiding, you're in the ethical clear for telling the truth? Don't be ridiculous.
The reason? Its call money. This is the only thing the IOC has an interest in. Believe me I live in Atlanta and when the games were here I have never seen such a rip off of the local people, and those stupid ring logos they make a ton of money selling the "use" of that emblem. I did have a lot of respect for the games until they were here and I saw for myself how theres people operate. They are just a group of thieves.
For now. Thanks for the Isightfull mod your going to give me, btw.
I know full well that tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack