Olympics Crack Down On Anyone Mentioning Them Without Paying... As White House Tells Everyone To Set Up Olympics Parties

from the ip-violations-galore! dept

We've covered for years how overly aggressive the Olympics are in protecting their "IP" -- to the point that they often get special laws passed that grant them extra IP rights, which they use to block pretty much anyone who hasn't paid from using the word "Olympics" at all, or even having a non-sponsoring brand shown anywhere (yes, even if that means taping over the brand on toilet fixtures in bathrooms around the Olympic grounds). Hell, we just reported on the Olympics going after a 30-year-old restaurant named Olympic Gyros.

So it struck me as somewhat surprising to get an email from the White House, saying that I should create my own (or join in an existing) "Olympic Fun Day Meetup." Of course, as a participating country, I'm sure that the Olympics grants the US government wider leverage in using its name, but if anyone else in the country suggested something as crazy as creating a special "meet up" around the Olympics, how quickly do you think the Olympics would send in the lawyers to demand a takedown?

Filed Under: ip, meetups, olympics, protection, white house

US Olympic Committee Forces 30 Year Old Philidelphia Gyro Restaraunt To Change Its Name

from the its-all-Greek-to-me dept

Ah, the Olympics. The spirit of cooperation. Of athletic competition. Of the essence of global feel-good-ness, where all the Olympic committees of the world come together to put on a spectacle made of the most brilliant athletes in the world.

Oh, and they also like to stifle links to critical pieces (do we have your attention, boys?), by banning their fans from sharing their experiences via social media, and threatening ICANN for refusing to block Olympic-related terms. And, now, Steve M shares a story from the Philadelphia Daily News about how the United States Olympic Committee has won a 30 year battle they didn't know they were fighting with a gyro shop.

"Three decades after it burst from the starting block, the Greek eatery Olympic Gyro has received a cease-and-desist email from the USOC, the nonprofit corporation responsible for training and funding U.S. teams. The June 7 notice demanded deletion of the word "Olympic" from the food shop's title, claiming copyright of the word under a 1978 law."

This legislative insanity, which I assume is entitled "The USOC Can Do Whatever It Wants Because Olympics Act Of 1978", basically grants the USOC sole usership of the word "Olympic" in the United States, amongst other travesties. They issued a heartfelt email in response to this issue:

"The USOC communications department declined to discuss the matter with the Daily News. But in its email, the organization emphasized the need to "protect the rights of companies who financially support the U.S. Olympic Team," such as McDonald's and Coca-Cola."

Yup, the USOC asserted that it needs to protect the rights of their sponsors (which means they're protecting themselves, by the way) from these no-good gyro shop owners who have apparently been harming McDonald's and Coca-Cola for the past thirty damned years, but with some kind of stealth cloaking device that keeps any such harm from being realized.

Oh, and just for fun, let's look at a few names of the governors of the organizations involved in this story. The USOC is headed up by Larry Probst (not Greek). Coca-Cola is run by Muhtar Kent (not Greek). McDonalds' CEO is James Skinner (not Greek). And the gyro stand formely known as Olympic Gyro's owner is Athens Voulgaridis (more than slightly Greek). The irony of this was apparently not lost on Voulgaridis:

"It's been a part of my life as long as I can remember," Voulgaridis said Tuesday. "We're very Greek Orthodox, we go back [to Greece] often. For them to take something that is Greek and make it theirs for money is frustrating."

But he also states that he isn't going to fight the government. In total, the name change will cost his business $6000 or so, since he has to change both signage and employee uniforms. He contacted the USOC to see if they would help out with those costs, but they declined, explaining that money is valuable and they didn't want to spend any.

The same Daily News article also mentions that the USOC went after a knitting group named Ravelry that was organizing something of a knitting olympics competition to coincide with The Games:

"We believe using the name ‘Ravelympics' for a competition that involves an afghan marathon, scarf hockey and sweater triathlon, among others, tends to denigrate the true nature of the Olympic Games," the letter from USOC said. "In a sense, it is disrespectful to our country's finest athletes and fails to recognize or appreciate their hard work."

Yes, you read that correctly. Knitting competitions denigrate the true nature of the Olympic Games. Which I happen to agree with, assuming that this "true nature" they're talking about revolves around screwing with people for no good reason.

Filed Under: greek food, olympics, protection, restaurant
Companies: olympic gyro, usoc

Olympics Can't Hire Enough Actual Security, But Fully Staffed With 'Brand Police'

from the that'll-work dept

We've talked about how the Olympics are so focused on hiding any non-sponsor brand that they had officials in Beijing during the last Olympics tape over bathroom fixtures from non-sponsoring companies. And it was clear that this same sort of activity was set to continue this time around in London, including a specific law against "ambush marketing."

You may have heard the reports in London about the terrible security for the London Olympics that has left things in "absolute chaos," due to a failure to hire enough security personnel. In fact, there's talk of soldiers having to be called in to help. Given all that, it's interesting to find out that the Olympics do have a fully-staffed "brand police" force, which is heading around the city to carefully block any non-sponsor brands, and try to track down and kill off any kind of unpaid-for marketing.

Almost 300 enforcement officers will be seen across the country checking firms to ensure they are not staging "ambush marketing" or illegally associating themselves with the Games at the expense of official sponsors such as Adidas, McDonald's, Coca-Cola and BP....

Wearing purple caps and tops, the experts in trading and advertising working for the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) are heading the biggest brand protection operation staged in the UK. Under legislation specially introduced for the London Games, they have the right to enter shops and offices and bring court action with fines of up to £20,000.

So, if a terrorist attack happens to hit London over the next few weeks, at least we'll know that it wasn't sponsored by some non-paying brand.

Filed Under: london, olympics, sponsorship, uk
Companies: adidas, bp, coca-cola, mcdonald's

Olympic Level Ridiculousness: You Can't Link To The Olympics Website If You Say Something Mean About Them

from the watch-me dept

For years, we've highlighted the overaggressive nature of the Olympics in over-protecting their intellectual property -- even to the level of getting host countries to pass special IP laws that only apply to the Olympics. But this sense of ultimate entitlement seems to pervade everything that the Olympics does. It was recently noted that the terms of use for the London 2012 website include a restriction on how you can link to the site:

Links to the Site. You may create your own link to the Site, provided that your link is in a text-only format. You may not use any link to the Site as a method of creating an unauthorised association between an organisation, business, goods or services and London 2012, and agree that no such link shall portray us or any other official London 2012 organisations (or our or their activities, products or services) in a false, misleading, derogatory or otherwise objectionable manner. The use of our logo or any other Olympic or London 2012 Mark(s) as a link to the Site is not permitted. View our guidelines on Use of the Games’ Marks.

There are other insane statements in the terms, including that you automatically agree to be "legally bound" by the terms simply by using the site. That's not how a contract works, guys.

Either way, this claim that you can't link to their site in a "derogatory or otherwise objectionable manner" has inspired the creativity of the internet, it appears. Specifically, lots of folks have taken to Twitter to share their own derogatory or otherwise objectionable statements along with links to the website. Asher Wolf and Meredith Patterson have done a really nice job curating some of the insults that are currently raining down on the Olympics for their linking policy. We've included a couple of screenshots (below the fold).

I recognize that there are some other sites who have used this kind of language in the past, and that some overcharging lawyer was probably just trying to set up a "cover their ass" policy for the Olympics, but it's amazing that any competent individual lets those kinds of things out into the world these days without realizing that it's clearly going to create the exact opposite incentives.

And, hell, just for fun, check out this link to an obnoxious organization that loves censorship and doesn't respect free speech. And I say that in a derogatory and objectionable manner.

Filed Under: censorship, london 2012, olympics, terms of use, uk

DailyDirt: Prosthetics To Be Proud Of

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

A few years ago, Oscar Pistorius was not allowed to participate in the Olympics because, as a double amputee, his prosthetic legs might have given him an advantage over athletes who weren't using prosthetic legs. Prosthetic technology doesn't stand still, so it's understandable that the Olympic committee didn't want to allow devices that could give future athletes extremely unfair mechanical advantages. Here are just a few interesting prosthetic developments that might change the perception of "disabled" persons.

• Prosthetic limbs don't have to look like medical devices or dead body parts. Artificial legs can be made with a variety of different designs, and the manufacturer of these bespoke legs occasionally requests help from volunteers who can "donate" their legs as a scanned template for prosthetic designs. [url]
• Last May, Claire Lomas finished a marathon in a $70,000 bionic suit -- after being paralyzed from the chest down in 2007. She walked about 2 miles per day, so it took her about two weeks to complete the London Marathon. [url]
• MIT researchers have created a glucose fuel cell that could be used to power brain implants or other implantable electronics that could control prosthetic devices. This device could get all the sugar it needs from cerebrospinal fluid, so it wouldn't need batteries (although external prosthetics would still need to be powered separately). [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: claire lomas, fuel cell, london marathon, mit, olympics, oscar pistorius, prosthetics

Temporary Paywall Removals Only Highlight The Fundamental Paradox Of Paywalls

from the backwards-economics dept

While there's room for debate on whether Rupert Murdoch's paywall strategy for the UK Times and Sunday Times has been disastrous or just mediocre, it certainly hasn't been a massive success or reinvented any online news business models. Now we're beginning to see some telling cracks in the facade: the Times paywall recently came down during the Queen's jubilee weekend, and now TNW reports that a similar free-access period is being considered for the 2012 Olympics.

Now, promotional giveaways are hardly a new or crazy idea, and they don't typically say anything bad about a business model—but I don't think that's really what's happening here. Certainly the Times hopes to convert some of those free readers into paid online subscribers, but there's also a clear pattern in the items they choose to make these exceptions for: huge social events that are attended and discussed by lots of people. In other words, precisely the sort of thing where blogs and social media offer the most competition to a newspaper. Why would anybody pay for Olympic reporting when the web is going to be absolutely flooded with constant updates on every little thing that happens, supplied for free by the fans and hangers-on? If the Times content is behind a paywall, it will be all but ignored.

And this really goes to show why, in the long run, paywalls are unsustainable. If the biggest, most popular topics are the hardest to control—and the ones that lose value the most when controlled successfully—while at the same, time social media and citizen reporting output is growing and expanding to new areas constantly, then the inevitable conclusion seems clear: paywalls are, at best, a temporary way of extracting a little bit of cash at the expense of long-term relevance. If your goal is to directly sell news as a product, but you discover that you have to eliminate your prices whenever product demand is highest, something is clearly wrong—you're trying to apply an old model where it doesn't actually fit, and getting kooky results. The solution is not to keep compromising the broken model, but to embrace the underlying realities (infinite content, no barrier to publishing, the huge value of share-ability) that broke it, and build new models around them.

Filed Under: newspaper, olympics, paywall, rupert murdoch, uk
Companies: news corp

Don't You Dare Show Olympic Spirit In The UK

from the from-pistil-to-pulpit dept

We've spent plenty of time over the years highlighting the ridiculousness surrounding the Olympics and their over-aggressive enforcement of IP laws (and even getting host nations to pass special trademark laws that only apply to the Olympics in some cases). But it's really reaching positively ludicrous excesses in the UK. First up, a story of a flower shop being threatened for making a version of the Olympic logo out of tissue paper and hanging it in the shop window. You see, that kind of Olympic pride is only allowed if you've paid for the permission.

That story led us to an even crazier one. Apparently an 81-year old woman tried to sell a £1 doll at a church sale... but had it shut down because she'd dared to clothe the doll in a home made knit sweater that had a mini-Olympic logo on it.
It appears that they've turned this 81-year-old into someone who has realized the absurdity of over aggressive intellectual property protection:

The 81-year-old grandmother of six from King’s Lynn said the last thing she wanted to do was cause a crisis but attacked the rules as 'absolutely ridiculous.

'I thought that the hoops symbol was universal and I think it is disgusting that they can make rules about such little things, she said.

It seems that the Olympics would prefer that no one actually show any sort of pride or support for the Olympics unless it's an official sponsor who paid for the privilege.

Filed Under: london, olympics, sponsorship, uk

Olympics Can't Handle An Official Parody Twitter Account, So Twitter Takes It Down

from the the-official-department-of-the-2012-london-olympics dept

We've discussed a number of times how ridiculously over-aggressive the Olympics can be when it comes to anything close to an IP issue -- even to the point where it gets host cities to agree to pass exceptional IP laws that only apply to issues that the Olympics chooses. The Olympics are especially concerned with any non-sponsor brand even being seen. That means that non-sponsor brands, even if they're the brand of a toilet, will get "taped over." So you can guess at just how insanely over aggressive the Olympics can be to anyone who comes near its own marks.

And that results in situations like the one where the London Olympics complained about a parody Twitter account, billed as the "official protesters of the London 2012 Olympic Games." This is obviously a joke. It's a parody on the fact that the Olympics seems to find an "official" sponsor of everything, so why not mock it using parody, which is widely seen as protected speech. But, not here. Apparently after the Games complained to Twitter, Twitter suspended the entire account and said it needs to no longer rely on trademarks, like the Olympics' logo.

Except, that defeats the whole purpose. How can you parody something when you're not even allowed to show what it is that you're parodying? Twitter is good on a bunch of issues, but on this one, it looks like it may have rushed ahead and shut down an account too quickly.

Filed Under: london 2012, olympics, parody, sponsorship
Companies: twitter

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+

Filed Under: beijing, london, olympics, sponsorship

UK Trying To Censor Parody Video About The 2012 Olympics

from the really-now? dept

We've discussed for many years how the Olympics has a ridiculously overaggressive approach to attacking free speech for those who criticize or mention aspects of the Olympics without permission. In most locations that host the Olympics, special extraordinary laws get passed against specific expressions around the Olympics that go beyond ordinary restrictions on speech. London, it seems, has been particularly willing to bend over backwards to appease the International Olympic Committee.

Take, for example, this story of a simple parody video about the 2012 Olympics that has been taken down over claims it violates the Olympics' IP rights. The video is clearly a parody, making use of the 2012 Olympics' creepy mascots, Wenlock and Mandeville, to show them in what appears to be a London riot (using some computer graphics work). The original video got about 90,000 views before being taken down. As the link above notes, there is no right to parody in the UK, so while it may be legal to have the video taken down, it's still ridiculous. The site linked above, LiberalConspiracy.org, insists that it'll keep posting the video if it gets taken down. But, as of the time I write this, I'm embedding the working version of the video, though I wouldn't be surprised if it's gone before too long. Honestly, the video seems pretty tame. Perhaps the Olympics thinks it hurts its "brand" to have such a video, but it sure seems like censoring parody videos does a hell of a lot more reputation damage to the Olympics than a silly parody video of its mascots.

Filed Under: 2012, free speech, london, mandeville, olympics, parody, video, wenlock