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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
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...
My grandma is going to love the 4K broadcasts, IOC totes knows whats its doing.
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.
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.
Old news. Japan started the 8k broadcasting with this Olympics.
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.
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.
O is very useful, You use it when you say: Oscar's only Ostrich oiled an orange owl today.
I have no choice but to do just that. Lacking a TV and any other means to access moving reports about the various events, I guess the sponsors will have to do without my eyeballs.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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
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.
and just like that the Olympics became invisible to two whole generations because a third older generation want to maintain control of distribution.
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.
You used the work "Olympic" without our express written permission. This is punishable by swimming in Rio.
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.
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?
I have not bothered with the Olympics for decades, though I have caught the opening and closing ceremony occasionally. I will probably start watching it when genetically modified humans start taking part, that is going to be fascinating.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
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.
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.
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