London 2012 Olympics Win Gold Medal For Cluelessness By Banning Video And Photo Uploads To Social Media During Games
from the gotta-protect-those-brands dept
As Techdirt has reported, the London 2012 Olympics bring with them a range of "special" measures guaranteed to make London a place for lovers of freedom to avoid this summer. But it seems that the organizers wish to ensure that anyone attending will also have a rather miserable time:
Fans in the crowd won't be allowed to upload snippets of the day's action to YouTube -- or even, potentially, to post their snaps from inside the Olympic Village on Facebook. And a crack team of branding "police", the Games organisers Locog have acknowledged, will be checking every bathroom in every Olympic venue -- with the power to remove or tape over manufacturers' logos even on soap dispensers, wash basins and toilets.
The same thing happened four years ago in Beijing as well, when non-sponsor brands were taped over in bathrooms so they didn't get "a free ride." That's because the real focus of the Olympic games is not anything the athletes might be doing, but keeping sponsors and business partners happy.
With just a little more than three months to go until the opening of the London 2012 Games, attention is increasingly turning to what many legal experts consider to be the most stringent restrictions ever put in place to protect sponsors' brands and broadcasting rights, affecting every athlete, Olympics ticket holder and business in the UK.
That's desperately sad. What is supposedly the greatest sporting event in the world could have been turned into the ultimate demonstration of how social media let spectators become participants through the real-time sharing of experiences.
Instead, the London 2012 organizing committee's obsession with policing brands and controlling what audiences do means that the recently-unveiled motto for this summer's games -- 'Inspire a generation' -- could hardly have been more inappropriate.
The young people that are meant to be inspired by the London games will find themselves forbidden to use properly the very means that would have let them do that: the social networks where they share their most important moments. As a result, London 2012 looks likely to be the most petty-minded and joyless Olympics so far.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: beijing, london, olympics, sponsorship
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Who DIDN'T see this coming???!!!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Who DIDN'T see this coming???!!!
Sorry but I would not give my support to this MAFIAA BS Event.
Hate to screw the People who worked hard to Compete but I will not break my Vows of Boycotting the MAFIAA.
Do you really want to see all your fave Sporting Events turn into this ?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Who DIDN'T see this coming???!!!
I understand the desire to advertise, but if they think they are more important than the olympics, then I don't want to fund their arrogance.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
On that side note, are ISPs in the UK required to cooperate with police?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
Congratulations UK, you are less free than China.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
Oops, did I actually mention, Greece, someone might work out what I meant and think "Olympics" in their head, and thus infringe on this vital-to-the-UK-economy piece of IP!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
They are absolutely, completely. unswervingly focused on one thing: image. NOTHING gets decided until there's a full evaluation of how it look on TV, in print, on the web. Everything is secondary to it: cost, athlete safety, spectator access, competitive balance, you name it, it's never the first thing that comes up in any discussion. And it's getting worse every Olympic cycle: I've been to the Games twice, and there is no way I'd go to London even if all expenses were paid. It's all about corporate this and VIP that, branding this and ceremony that, and oh, right, someone DID mention something about a track event sandwiched in there somewhere...wait, who are those people in race bibs anyway? Are they important?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
welcome to the modern world, its all about the Benjamins
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Let them keep up their ideas of what is really important. It doesn't jive with mine.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Makes Sense
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Makes Sense
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Makes Sense
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
They will force it to be taken down, they will then sue the uploader and try to get the ISP to drop them.
Then they will forget if they signed off on the rendition of the uploader to get the proper punishment in an approved reeducation camp.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Yawn
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Yawn
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Yawn
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Now take that wasted energy and go put it on the ridiculous governments, and they stupidest privacy-destroying, spy-enabling, retarded new laws and their entertainment sponsors. They're trying to destroy civilization and you complain about games? At least make your bitching worth something. Energy better spent. Pick your fights.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Then, pray tell, WHY is it that even the ATHLETES can't be seen in anything OTHER than corporate sponsored wear?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
The IOC does have control of the event, but for a government to spend several million to make everything "right" for IOC standards (which they will not make back during the events or after), and then pass a series of laws to make this private group happy and help them protect their outdated expansive view of entitlement...
Gee they could be an **AA if you substitute athletes and artists.
Better question I guess is, for all of this money IOC takes in, why do athletes still have to get handouts to get the the event? Isn't it supposed to be all about the athletes?
Wow just the like **AA's...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
(I'm the same AC who referenced the IOC above.)
The athletes -- unless they are (a) in a marquee sport and (b) medal favorites are very much an afterthought. The rules and qualifications are carefully engineered to result in competitions that look good on TV -- and if that means raising the qualification standard so high that many countries can't get anyone into an event, that's exactly what they'll do. Remember the Jamaica bobsled team? Remember Eddie the Eagle? The IOC hates that sort of thing. Whenever it crops up, they change the rules to minimize the chance that it'll come up again.
The old ideal, that every country would send the best they had, and that they would all compete fairly to see who would win that day, is gone. At the 1996 Olympics (Atlanta), Bosnia sent 5 athletes in 5 sports...and 1 coach for all of them. The IOC, sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars, couldn't be bothered to help.
So when you watch all the athletes parade in (if you do) and you see the relative sizes of the delegations, keep in mind that part of the driver for that is the population of the country, but part of it is wealth. And in many cases, athletes who deserve to be there aren't -- while of course there is always IOC money for another cocktail party or breakfast reception or whatever.
I had the privilege of meeting someone from one of those countries some years ago. He trained incredibly hard, under conditions that you wouldn't believe if I told you. He had junk equipment -- but that's all his nation could come up with. And he competed HARD. No, he didn't do very well...but is that important? He represented his country proudly, he competed fairly, and he gave his best. There is nothing else for any athlete to do.
I still watch, because of people like him.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Well, since the Olympics megacorp demands and gets special, extremely draconian laws passed in the places the events are held, this "wasted energy" actually is being spent protesting ridiculous governments and their stupidest, privacy-destroying, spy-enabling, retarded new laws.
Or do you think this stuff only affects people actively participating in or watching the Olympics?
What I want to know is why the people of any city or country is willing to tolerate the presence of the Olympic games? Hosting them doesn't make a lot of money for the locality once you deduct the expenses their presence brings, and it's not even much of boost to image of the places, particularly amongst the younger people who generally view the Olympics as a joke and (worse) as a lengthy, boring commercial exercise.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Ok... if they want to do whatever they want then they can pay for the whole thing. My taxes have paid for this competition and I think their draconian rules and the impact it will have on my life in London and my enjoyment of the games is bullshit.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Not to mention, people pay big bucks to attend - that's where the profit comes in. Turning the Olympics into a fascist rally doesn't bode well for them or for us.
By the way, I'll be paying attention to those "brands" - in fact, I'll be researching them and that will be the last time I spend a cent on any of them.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
So why bother watching then?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: So why bother watching then?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: So why bother watching then?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: So why bother watching then?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: So why bother watching then?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: So why bother watching then?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Epic Fail
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Epic Fail
Now, artists just grin and bear it, and try to minimize the disruption of jerks with their flashes if it's appropriate. I know that I and my peers (even though we're "old") check out youtube videos of our favorite bands the morning after a show & post 'em on facebook, etc.
Imagine the word-of-mouth the IOC could get by embracing technology instead of trying to stuff the cell phone back into the rotary age.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The great IOC clampdown..again
Of course, people with camera phones did just that. And posted them and the IOC went bonkers.
This after a four or five year lead up to the event where the IOC inspected the Metro Vancouver area to assure that absolutely nothing, even at the microscopic level it seemed, violated any one of their copyrights or trademarks.
Even to the point of trying to get a court enforced order on a pizza place that had been operating for over 40 years called Olympia Pizza. They failed.
I don't know how successful they were at getting women and girls to change their names if they happened to be named Olympia.
I'm sure that they wanted to go after the name Olympic Peninsula in Washington State except that, perhaps, some bright lawyer or the US Console in Vancouver talked them out of it.
The games themselves were wonderful as were the athletes. The IOC got a gold medal for being completely and incredibly out of touch and micromanaging.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Come to think of it, what are they going to do if you have a company vehicle with advertizing on the side? Does the anti-advertizing law allow them to "remove" the offending advertizing? Did the law actually place a limit on signs or value of property to be removed?
Of course, maybe I am too paranoid.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
I haven't read the whole Act myself, but the branding guidelines say that, as an individual, I can say something along the lines of "I support London 2012", but as a business I can't as this could create an association between my company and the Olympics.
I believe that uploading photos to Facebook would be a civil offence, and LOCOG have said they are unlikely to prosecute people for this (though they do have the power to do so).
Branding guidelines
Extract of the Act
Guardian article discussing this further
* It's just as well the Act was passed by parliament and not a private company, or its name may well be in contravention of the Act by creating an association between parliament and the Olympics.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
> 2006* does let the police or "enforcement officers" enter
> private premises and remove advertising -- and charge
> people for the privilege too.
It'll be interesting to see what happens the next time the US hosts an Olympic games. Most of these draconian laws couldn't be passed here without a wholesale repeal of the Bill of Rights.
I wonder if our insistence on having an inviolable Constitution will automatically disqualify the US from hosting e Olympics from this point forward.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
> 2006* does let the police or "enforcement officers" enter
> private premises and remove advertising -- and charge
> people for the privilege too.
It'll be interesting to see what happens the next time the US hosts an Olympic games. Most of these draconian laws couldn't be passed here without a wholesale repeal of the Bill of Rights.
I wonder if our insistence on having an inviolable Constitution will automatically disqualify the US from hosting e Olympics from this point forward.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
how much you wana bet the got masking tape ready if your waring a shirt that somehow "Advertises" something thats not giving them money?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
it's nothing more than global commercial program showing Coca Cola, Visa, and McDonalds 24/7...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Stupidity reigns
http://gulfnews.com/news/world/uk/london-2012-organisers-wanted-keith-moon-to-play-1.101 1094
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
WWE
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Tats
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.
And what about the IOC marketing team? "Hey unnamed corporation, sponsor the games and we'll make sure no one sees them!"
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Easy solution to this problem
Branding problem solved.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
This guy!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The olympics..
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: The olympics..
But in re this:
and doing anything you can to hurt your opponents.
In all the years that I've been loosely or tightly associated with a national sports organization, I've never seen that. Oh, not that all the athletes don't want to win; of course they do. And not that all of them like each other: some do, some don't. But there is an implicit, deep understanding that they want to win NOT because they hurt their opponents, NOT because their opponents had a bad day, NOT because they caught a lucky break, but because absolutely everything went right for their opponents...and they managed to win anyway.
My proudest finish as an athlete was a 4th-place. I won silver and bronze medals at the same competition, but that 4th place really meant something to me, because I did it against the toughest competitive field I'd ever faced, including the world champion -- and I actually turned in a better performance in that event than in the ones in which I medaled.
This isn't unique to me: talk to any high-level athlete in distance running or skiing or cycling or skating: when you win because everyone else fell short, it's a hollow victory. You feel like you didn't earn it. (Even though, factually, you did.) You can't savor it the way you can when you grind out a victory, narrowly besting someone who could do the same to you tomorrow -- and well might. It feels like a "show up" award, where you wound up winning simply because you were the last one standing. Athletes will take the victory when it's there, of course, but they don't want to win this way. Not really.
And beyond that: given the chronic shortage of funds in all but a few sports, athletes frequently train together. There are limited facilities, limited coaches, etc., so it makes sense for everyone to pool their resources and try to collectively improve. No athlete is going to try to hurt someone that they just spent the last 3 years, 6 days a week, 9 hours a day, training with.
And beyond THAT: there is no quicker way to lose every possible friend, every favor, every open door, every resource you could ever need, than to hurt someone else. Everyone knows that except, perhaps, a tiny few exceedingly arrogant people...and they learn the hard way. Quickly.
You may not see it all the time, but there are bonds of necessity, bonds of friendship, bonds of shared sacrifice that unite athletes -- many times, even when their countries are fighting each other. THAT is the Olympic spirit and it lives despite the best attempts of the IOC to bury it under a mountain of advertising and self-aggrandizing bullshit.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
So sad
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Crap Hole
These sad fucks want us to live in a world where everything we see and hear is ' owned ' by someone and we have to pay each time we want to consume or share it.
The UK is becoming a crap hole , it and the Olympics deserve each other.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Crap Hole
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
You have to be kidding
Just stop being complete arsehats about it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Where this guy his his info?
Try teh Google and check into it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Not attending... or viewing... to reading...
Screw 'em - they're managing to drain every single ounce of joy out of life and it's really pissing me off.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
clueless
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
That's why, if anything, sporting organizations seem to be more copyright draconian than even Hollywood, trying to ban "unauthorized" reporting or photography of any kind.
It's the complete anathema of the many-to-many social broadcasting of the internet, where everyone is a "source" and everyone is a "consumer."
Now imagine if we started our own olympics where every athlete competed in their own home town and the winners were chosen by the posting of authenticated times, and all the footage just went straight up on YouTube...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Preposterous
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Preposterous
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Curse them
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Curse them
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
i mean 4000 chauffeur driven beedubs going about in elite lanes whilst ambulances stuck in traffic, londoners are gonna love that.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
WTF?????
I guess these questions are irrelevant since people will go to the games and they will take pics and vids and they will share them. That's what people do.
Fuck the IOC, either allow people to share their experiences or I suggest that free nations should start banning the Olympics.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Just had to say it again
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
And just when I was planning to see it with the team.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]