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Olympic Committee Prohibits Streaming Apps, Vines and GIFs From Its Events (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The Olympics Committee has introduced a new set of social media guidelines for the 2016 games. Not only will streaming applications and vines be prohibited, but GIFs will be too. TechCrunch reports: "Part of the new restriction appears in the official broadcast rules (PDF), under 'Internet and Mobile Platforms': '[...] the use of Olympic Material transformed into graphic animated formats such as animated GIFs (i.e. GIFV), GFY, WebM, or short video formats such as Vines and others, is expressly prohibited.' Then, in the FAQ for the social and digital media guidelines (PDF): 'Broadcasting images via life-streaming applications (e.g. Periscope, Meerkat) is prohibited inside Olympic venues.' The versions of these documents updated for the 2014 games in Sochi don't have any comparable language, or at least nothing this specific. A possible exception is the 'Photographer's Undertaking,' which states: 'The dissemination of moving images or sound captured in an Olympic venue, through any media, including display on the internet, Mobile Platform and other interactive media or electronic medium, is strictly prohibited.'"
Prohibit television broadcasts, too.
It's a big corrupt waste of time and resources, it funnels huge amounts of money out of the lower and middle class into the pockets of the wealthy and at the expense of nations..
fuck the Olympics so fucking much
are running the show.
Wasn't the Olympics supposed to be about the worldwide celebration of amateur sport?
That is, sport done for the love of it, not for money.
This is what anonymization services were invented for, people!
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
We used to record the broadcasts, first on VCR of course, and later Tivo. But since the cable companies have obsoleted both of those, plus our PC tuners, with encrypted digital transmission, we simply won't watch at all. We are in a valley that does not receive any over-the-air signals so we don't have a choice - we must pay to watch television, even broadcast. We refuse to pay even more than we already are just to do what we've done since the late 70s - record television for later viewing and/or skipping of segments/advertisements we are not interested in watching. The amount of absolute crap that is mixed in with every few minutes of actual events and competitions is just too great. If we can't skip over the shit and watch the important stuff, fuck it.
Because of this, our television watching has significantly decreased, as has our programming package (and also our monthly bill). When the recording options went to shit, we started watching "on demand" instead, and if it wasn't on that, we just didn't watch it. But now the cable company is further trying to extort even more money out of us by reducing "on demand" offerings to "HD only", which just pisses us off even more (we do not have a fancy new set). And to add even more headache, what on demand programming that had closed captions, no longer does. Cable company doesn't care because "on demand" is not required to carry captions like the live broadcasts. We of course are told we can (pay to) subscribe to their DVR service and record programming which would then have the captions preserved during playback. Fuck.
Someone in the IOC needs to be picked up an shooken - hard.
I guess this means that proud parents can't tweet pictures of their medal winning children.
Attendees can't talk about what a great experience they're having.
Everybody else ignoring what's going on there.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
If they're trying to prevent people from getting excited about the Olympics or share their enthusiasm, they've succeeded. At this point I really couldn't give a crap about the Olympic games. Now I just feel sorry for the athletes who are risking disease over something the IOC seems dead set on restricting access to.
Better yet, don't mess with the IOC. Just avoid the olympics entirely. Then we'll see how quickly they realize the stupidity of their decisions. Maybe.
and just like that the Olympics became invisible to two whole generations because a third older generation want to maintain control of distribution.
They've figured out that people attending these events aren't going to take anybody's broadcast revenues by sharing on social media. It's about sharing the experience with their friends and family. A picture, or video clip, that shows...I was here!! This helps build up the hype, viewership, and attendance overall.