The IOC Joins the DMCA Censorship Club
from the ready?-set?-censored! dept
The International Olympic Committee is no stranger to overzealous protection of what they perceive to be their intellectual property. We've covered their ridiculous attempts to change British law to "protect" the terms "Olympics" and "2012" (the year London hosts the summer games). It seems the folks at the IOC want to control all aspects of their sporting event, even how people discuss it. Knowing this, and the ways in which the DMCA has been abused time and time again, it was hardly surprising when the IOC sent a take-down notice to YouTube for a video posted by Students for a Free Tibet.The video, which showed a pro-Tibet candle-light vigil in New York City and images from the March protests in Tibet, was dutifully pulled by YouTube. However, it was unclear what infringement the IOC was claiming. Although their famous interlocking rings were briefly shown, that would seem to be a trademark, not covered by the DMCA. Even if they claimed the rings were copyrighted creative content, their creation in 1913 places them firmly in the public domain (on copyright, the trademark remains -- but the DMCA isn't for trademark). Luckily after a number of sites questioned the action, the IOC withdrew their complaint. This remains troubling, though. The DMCA was not meant to silence legitimate speech, but the number of times litigants have suppressed content they don't like is staggering. This case benefits from external media attention due to existing hot-button political issues, but not all censored YouTube videos are so lucky and, undoubtedly, bogus DMCA requests have censored videos which result not in blogosphere outrage, but silenced expression.
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Yeah everyone knows the DMCA sucks . . . ?
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The IOC...
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When building weapons
The DMCA is merely a weapon to be stockpiled. And it will be abused because of its effectiveness. If only the Congress Critters were required to have a History major or something....
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Re: When building weapons
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Re: Re: When building weapons
hehe I think it was NOBEL who created both TNT and PEACE prize . . . this dicotamy has always lead me to hope that one day the Bush Administration might actually do something to benefit the United States . . .
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Re: Re: Re: When building weapons
TNT is different than dynamite, it is not nitroglycerin at all, and was invented by someone else.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: When building weapons
I beg to differ, to quote that great Aussie thinker Bon Scott; 'Im TNT . . . Im dynamite' clearly he is making a correlation here and in fact suggesting that both TNT and Dynamite are in fact the same thing. Ohh and that they both apparently . . . rock.
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Re : Kevin Donovan
I like it.
Thank you Kevin.
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That's fine - in the spirit of where the games are being held, I won't talk about it.
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Vancouver 2010
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Re: Vancouver 2010
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Sort of his way of making amends.
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IOC and name Olympic
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Olympics = greed
It's all about greed and money...the true god of the West. The Olympics may claim to be a "amateur" sporting event to spread "goodwill," but it's just all about the money. Now it's just a bunch of sponsorships, absurd IP ideals, steroids (remember Marion Jones?), corruption (remember Salt Lake City?) and cities spending billions upon billions of dollars (remember Athens?).
This is worse than when the NFL goes nuts over its Big Game...at least the NFL admits they're all about the money.
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Video Cencorship
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