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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.'"
Dont mess with the IOC's money.
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
I guess they're just for old people now.
Which is why very few governments will tell the Olympic Committee to go f* themselves with their idiotic rules. They should, though.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
On any media at all.
But the IOC's over-the-top "We own it all!" is just a bit much. They're almost to the point of enforcing death penalty should someone even think about posting a selfie of themselves at the Olympics.
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?
On any media at all.
But the IOC's over-the-top "We own it all!" is just a bit much. They're almost to the point of enforcing death penalty should someone even think about posting a selfie of themselves at the Olympics.
Dear mpercy,
In a recent slashdot post, you used the word "Olympics" without the express written permission of the International Olympic Committee. This constitutes copyright infringement and unauthorized use of our intellectual property. To avoid a lawsuit, send us $980 within the next 24 hours, or face the wrath of our lawyers. Do not delay; we know where your little girl goes to school.
Yours Truly,
The International Olympic Committee
An international, non-profit, non-governmental organization
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Without the athletes, the IOCCC - no wait, that's the international obfuscated C code contest - uhm... the IOC is it? has nothing.
It seems long past time for athletes to get together and say "No, fuck that. Either you let us record our own events, or we're not participating. Our sideways smartphone video and looped animated GIFs are not going to compete with NBC's twenty million dollar television cameras. Just ease the fuck up already and stop power tripping all over that shit."
The athletes have all the power here, not the IOC. It seems to be getting past time for a demonstration of that fact.
Does anyone even watch the Olympics anymore? For me, it just seems like a good way to block regularly scheduled programming. We get it, you sport.
If they had a channel dedicated to olympics that you had to opt-in to... few would bother.
Won't be surprised when the certified mail or "you've been served" paperwork arrives.
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.
They don't want any videos of people with Zika getting out.
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.
They also sued a Greek restaurant.
This is very sad for me to say for those who have future Olympic dreams, but between the nightmare that is Rio infrastructure/security and this latest move to try and control all media, I sincerely hope that all future Olympic venues withdraw, and every other city on the planet tells the IOC to go fuck themselves.
Perhaps that will be a gentle enough reminder as to why they should not act so damn arrogant.
So I'm assuming APNGs, MNGs, and WEBMs are OK?
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Multinational meg-corps love to insist that they own everything and people must pay them, but that just aint so.
WARNING: They DO own their copyrighted material, like logos, trademarks, commentary they create, artistic visual elements, etc. so people need to be careful about that stuff, but they DO NOT own the facts of the historical events.
In the US, Pro football and pro baseball leagues are always insisting that nobody can report on the games without permission (i.e. $$$$) and they count on everybody being scared and backing down. They do not actually own the historical facts of the games.
They need to do this, because all those selfies that athletes took during the parade destroyed the Beijing Olympics. Oh wait... they didn't.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Coffee is a Coke product. It's Georgia Peach coffee, and it's literally big in Japan. It tastes so bad to American palettes that it's a beverage allowed to be brought in from the outside to Coke headquarters in Atlanta.
I wonder what happens when they try to sue a mountain range
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
All this crap about controlling who, what and how people can enjoy the Olympic experience is the reason I'm bored with it and will not be watching a single event.
Seriously, I'm having trouble deciding whether this is old-fashioned out-of-control money-grubbing, or it's the IOC trying to keep a lid what is shaping up to be a gigantic figurative (and, in the case of the swimming events, literal) shit-show.
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
I thought they quit that years ago.
If they returned it to the original Greek format (naked), I might be interested. Otherwise... yawn.
Greece would have to rename it.
Which is pretty much what I'd do if I was Greece, to distance themselves from this travesty.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There's a reason they're doing this. It's not just that the IOC is incredibly greedy. It's that their greed is fueled by NBC's money, and NBC is damn well going to get their pound of flesh for the $1.29 billion they paid for exclusive rights. If recent news reports are accurate, NBC is just barely breaking even, having sold $1.2 billion in advertising so far.
So sure, blame IOC's greed. But don't forget to blame NBC's greed too. They want every second of Olympic imagery to be surrounded by inescapable commercials, or they could be in serious trouble. If the interest of advertisers falls off even a tiny bit, they start losing money on the Games, and they have a contract out through 2032.
That started to happen with the Olympic Restaurant in Denver in 1976, but Colorado told the Olympics to piss off for different reasons, and the lawsuit fizzled out.
Maybe if I saw random clips and pictures from the Olympics I might think about watching through some approved channel. As it stands, I likely will forget they are on and not watch at all.
What if the GIFs are produced automatically? My photo automatically uploads all photos to Google Photos. If Google notices that a group of photos comprise a sequence of events, it will helpfully produce an animated version of all of those images together. Is Google violating the IOC's rules if I were to photograph an event and happened to capture enough for Google to put together an animated GIF?
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
They are working on mind wipe technology for that. It will be like those pictures they take at amusement parks at the end of a ride that you can then pay to get a copy of. Want to keep that memory of your team winning the Gold? Pay up or get wiped on the way out!
You used the work "Olympic" without our express written permission. This is punishable by swimming in Rio.
Ahh! "word" not "work". *sigh*
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Yeah, the IOC aren't "fascist capitalists", whatever that means. They are an international NGO and have far more in common with far-left movements like BLM and SJW than they do any dirty capitalism. You remember how we all found out that the Democratic Party was not what it seemed? Turns out, it's a bunch of racist assholes who bused violent staffers into opposition rallies to fuck their shit up? Yeah, the IOC is the same way. Supposedly on our side, trusted with running the Olympics, and it turns out they're a bunch of corrupt NGO assholes who only care about themselves.
Fascist? Even today's Neo-Nazis aren't fascists. You need to stop using that word.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
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.
I don't think US law applies in Brazil.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Are they going to outright block access to the streaming apps' servers (hello VPN/Proxy!), or make everyone take out their smartphone and prove they don't have Periscope installed on it before they are let in the door?
Seriously? No GIFs? Without GIFs lots of us would never have seen the lovely, bouncy, bouncy Michelle Jenneke in Barcelona.
The IOC can fuck right off.
Not necessarily in response to this, but because I want to, I have banned all Olympics TV coverage from my home. Not one single moment of it will appear on any TV, tablet, phone, laptop, roku, talking trout on the wall or written in blood on the walls.
The IOC is corrupt and full of shit and the USOC is right up there with them. They can all go to hell. But meanwhile, I won't watch and I won't spend a dime on sponsored stuff. Because any business who'd sponsor this is either stupid for ignoring the crimes these people have pulled, or they don't care. Either way. I can buy or use some other brand of everything. Easily.
Sig for hire.
The IOC? Hell no, sell it to the highest bidder. Can you imagine "The Coca Cola Mountain Range" in every atlas, on every globe...?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You can encode movies into ASCII animation, also 3D movies! I would love to see olimpic games on my old VT220 terminal...
Internet Of Coercion ? (or is it Bayerische Motoren Werke ?)
The IOC's olympic games aren't the only way to have sports competitions.
It's probably too late for this year, but I'd love to see some of the athletes raise money (crowdfunding?) to move their competition somewhere else, and not have anything to do with the IOC. Just hold their competition on their own.
For example, for the sports that are scheduled to take place in polluted water - raise money for those athletes to drop out of the Olympic competitions, and to move to another location with clean water. If these alternate games were not held at the same time as the IOC's Rio games, then some news organizations would cover the alternate games.
Unfortunately doing this in the next two weeks would probably break some rules, and might set up the athletes for a lawsuit, besides disappointing spectators who paid to see those sports in Rio. But if some athletes could set up alternate games in the future, then great.
I wish that was an option in Denmark. Both of the major OTA TV channels are playing the Olympics non-stop, this after a summer of being full of Vuelta-something-España and Tour de France.
Movies? Oh, every Friday night one of the channels has a 'vote' for a movie from the 70s, 80s, or 90s.
Me thinks they're out of money.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Corrupt bunch of douchebags.
EOM
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I also hate NBC using Bob Costas as a studio host for the Olympics. That's a waste. Aside from the retiring Vin Scully, he's the best baseball announcers there is now. I'm sure he can do other sports very well. When baseball returns in 2020, I sure hope NBC has Costas call some of those games.
I love watching Bob Costas. He seems to realize that it's all complete crap, and so has fun with it. He does try to keep things moving along, during the interminable interviews and back-story pieces; I get the impression he'd really just rather have more sports and less talk.
The more people I meet, the better I like my dog.
If those proud parents wanted to post anything, they should have signed a contract with the IOC and outbid all the combined broadcast companies in the world.
They had the same opportunity as every other entity. And the attendeed should just be lucky they are allowed to go. Complain and they can go home. Do you listen to your pigs complain when you bring them to the slaughterhouse? They are property.
Are you a comunist or what?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
What good is it to pay so much money for tickets and travel to see the events if you can't even brag about it?
If they returned it to the original Greek format (naked), I might be interested. Otherwise... yawn.
Watch beach volleyball. They're getting pretty close. A really aggressive game of "keep the balloon from hitting the floor" isn't interesting enough by itself so they mandated bikinis as the required uniform. A little T&A never hurt ratings right?
Ahh! "word" not "work". *sigh*
Thank GOD that slashdot doesn't allow any super-advanced features like editing a post, even for a 2-minute period after posting. Because that would just be pandering to its users, eh?
Seriously, slashdot- get your shit together and let people edit a fucking post. If you're worried about malicious edits, make posts editable for some short period after they've been posted. A couple of minutes would do it, just long enough to fix a typo or something.
Now, cue the anal-retentive douche bags who'll feel that this idea is crazily permissive or something.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
You joke, but the Olympic Mountains are actually referenced in the United States code related to the Olympic Committee. Based on my reading (IANAL) it seems that it would be illegal to name a new skiing business after the mountains if it didn't exist before 1998.
Popisms.com - Connecting pop culture
While it's almost certainly not permitted to broadcast your own play-by-play in real-time, you can certainly give those accounts at a later time.
You can however broadcast a play-by-play of the broadcast without permission. Oh, they could bring a lawsuit over it but I think you'd be on safe legal ground. That's basically what media companies do all the time. Nothing illegal about real time second hand report of events. ABC is under no obligation to kowtow to NBC regarding reporting facts as long as they don't use copyrighted materials or trademarks without permission.
MLB prohibits using the calls by the announcers without permission.
MLB can claim to prohibit whatever they want but unless you are actually rebroadcasting the calls themselves (or a reasonable facsimile of them) then they can't do shit about you reporting what happened in the game itself.
They're part of the broadcast, so it's logical that they would be subject to copyright.
Of course they are just like any performance would be. But I can report on the performance as long as my report doesn't resemble what is being performed.
Then NBC should contract with ISIS to make sure there's a terrorist event. Nothing glues eyeballs to the TV like something blowing up and killing some athletes.
I mean, when you're spending 1.29 Billion, what's another million or two to make sure somebody gets killed on live TV? Didn't you folks ever see the movie "Network" ?
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
... GOOD, because who cares about the Olympics anyway? The less I hear/see about it the better... ...BAD, corporate Nazis suck.
obligatory Dick's response. (too bad I can't embed the image...)
https://www.google.com/imgres?...
"expressly prohibited"
Brazil, as a signatory to the Berne Convention, makes this perfectly legal no matter what the IOC says.
During the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, stores with "Olympic" in their name were forced to cover up the "Olympic" part. It's a common store name because there's an Olympic Blvd in Los Angeles (ironically renamed after the 1932 Olympics), so a lot of stores on that street incorporate it into their name - Olympic Car Repair, Olympic Printing, etc.). I hear the same thing happened in Atlanta and Salt Lake City, though fewer businesses were affected since AFAIK they don't have an Olympic St/Blvd/Ave.