Canadian Olympic Committee Tries To Trademark Lyric From National Anthem

from the now-that's-chutzpah dept

We were just talking about how the UK had granted all sorts of extraordinary trademark rights to the Olympics for the 2012 games, but the same is true in Canada. Last year, we had reported on similar special trademark rights given to the Olympics for the games in Vancouver in 2010. However, now the Canadian Olympic Committee is taking it to another level. Reader Michael_S alerts us to the news that the Olympic Committee is trying to trademark a line from the Canadian national anthem, "O, Canada." Specifically, it's applying for a trademark on "with glowing hearts," which comes from the song's lyric: "With glowing hearts we see thee rise, the true North strong and free." Even more ridiculous is the list of products that the Olympic Committee claims its trademark would cover: "laundry bleach, diesel fuel, dietary supplements, key chains, belt buckles knapsacks, bobble-head dolls, bathrobes, edible fats and beer." Is the Olympic committee planning to sell diesel fuel under the brand "with glowing hearts"?

Filed Under: canada, national anthem, olympics, trademark

Don't Say 2012 Olympics Unless You've Paid Your Licensing Fee

from the IP-gone-mad dept

The Olympics are notorious for getting local governments to grant them extra special intellectual property rights that go so far beyond what's reasonable (and local existing laws) that it's become something of a pure mockery of the concept of intellectual property. Remember how non-sponsored brands found in and around the Olympics in Beijing were covered by tape? Well, that may be nothing compared to what's going to happen in London. Two years ago, we noted that the Olympics had convinced UK officials to create a special trademark law, just for the Olympics that gave special protections to a variety of terms relating to the Olympics, including 2012, games, gold, silver and bronze. Yes, if you were to say "reach for the gold in 2012" as part of any advertisement and you weren't an approved Olympic sponsor, you'd be breaking the law in the UK.

Even though this all happened two years ago, it appears that a variety of companies are waking up to how ridiculous this is. A marketing body in the UK has now released a report detailing how draconian the law is for marketers. The one thing that's still never been explained is why governments would grant these rights -- which go well beyond traditional trademark rights -- to the Olympics, which isn't exactly hurting for sponsors. What's wrong with applying traditional trademark law to the Olympics as well?

Filed Under: 2012, london, olympics, trademark

NBC Proud That It Made It More Difficult For People To Watch The Olympics

from the really-didn't-think-this-through dept

We've already explained how screwed up NBC's Olympic coverage policy on the web turned out to be. Its use of proprietary technology and annoying restriction severely limited its online audience -- even though the company admitted that its own research found that the more people watched online, the more they watched it on TV as well. So, given all that, you have to wonder why NBC Universal's Rick Cotton is somehow claiming a "victory" in preventing other sites from showing Olympics coverage. After all, his own company admitted that online viewing didn't cannibalize TV viewing, but only encouraged more of it. By that measure, Cotton's efforts to prevent clips of the Olympics being shared elsewhere on the web actually shrunk NBC's audience. Yet, according to Cotton: "It was a great, great success." Then again, this is the same Rick Cotton who once tried to convince Congress that it had to stop movie piracy to help poor corn farmers and claimed that no one at NBC Universal could come up with a working business model for TV content without government help, so logic might not be a strong point.

Filed Under: olympics, piracy, rick cotton, web video
Companies: nbc universal

NBC's Crippled Online Olympics Coverage Attracts Small Audience

from the surprise! dept

NBC apparently got about 72 million video streams during this Olympics season, and is touting this as a great success. It's true that this is a lot more than any previous Olympics, but I don't think NBC has anything to crow about. Remember, this is the most famous sporting event in the world, and it got non-stop media coverage for close to a month. Yet in a country with 300 million people, they only got a total of 72 million streams? That's less than one stream for every 4 Americans. And as Ben Worthen points out, YouTube streamed 4.2 billion videos—60 times as many—in the month of May. So people are clearly watching a lot of videos. Most of them just aren't NBC's Olympics videos.

Amazingly, NBC is "using the Olympics to assert that TV is the preferred medium of consumers," with 93 percent of all viewing. I think this says less about consumers than about NBC's own marketing decisions. The problem is that despite its protests to the contrary, NBC wasn't serious about web-based coverage of the Olympics. They held back the most popular coverage for television audiences, forcing online viewers to wait until later (sometimes much later due to a desire for tape delays) to watch the stuff they were really interested in. It looks like they also forced anyone who wanted to watch the video to download and install Microsoft's Silverlight plugin. And of course they've gone out of their way to make embedding impossible, cutting off one of the most popular ways of expanding the reach of content. Not surprisingly, when NBC makes the Internet a second-class medium for Olympics coverage, most people watch TV instead.

Filed Under: olympics, online coverage
Companies: nbc universal

China Blocks iTunes After Olympic Athletes Download Pro-Tibetan Music

from the so-much-for-the-lack-of-censorship dept

So, while it turned out to be a myth that China would drop the Great Firewall during the Olympics, it's still a bit surprising to hear that China is apparently blocking at least some access to iTunes. Apparently, an organization put out an album of pro-Tibetan songs, and asked Olympic athletes to download the songs and put them on their iPods as a sort of quiet protest. Of course, then the group put out a press release, claiming that 40 Olympians had done so... and, suddenly folks in China are having trouble accessing iTunes. Not surprisingly, a "semi-official news portal" of the Chinese gov't claims that folks in China are denouncing Apple for even offering the music, and are calling for the musicians featured on the album to be banned from playing in China.

Filed Under: china, great firewall, itunes, olympics, tibet

NBC Seems To Have Learned The Wrong Lesson About Scarcity

from the an-olympic-gold-in-misunderstanding dept

Of the various television companies, NBC Universal has always had the most trouble grasping the basic economics of scarcity and abundance, so perhaps it's no surprise that it's still misinterpreting the data that shows its mistake in trying to stop anyone from watching any of the major Olympic events live online. Instead, it forced people to wait until it was aired, hours later, on TV. This is leading to massive frustration, as people hear about various events, but can't see them for a while. Stunningly, NBC Universal boss Jeff Zucker seems to think this is a good thing, claiming:

"There's no question we did the right thing in holding the opening ceremony to air in prime time on NBC that night. The excitement that built out of word of mouth that the opening ceremony was the most spectacular thing that people had seen, that China had wanted to make a statement and they made a statement and people wanted to see that."

Read that a few times and spot the logical inconsistency. He's basically saying that by forbidding people from seeing the content and frustrating them, it built up word of mouth excitement. Apparently, it hasn't occurred to him (despite what his own data suggests) that another way to have built up word of mouth about the events would be to show them so that people could watch them live and tell their friends about it getting them to go see it when it gets rebroadcast again in prime time.

At the link above, Chris Matyszczyk, lays on the satire in responding to this view that forced deprivation breeds word of mouth demand:

So one assumes, given that this strategy has been so successful, the next time NBC's cameras exclusively witness, say, an assassination or a politician saying or doing something nutty, they will keep it to themselves until prime time comes along. You know, just to build up the excitement.

Let's hold NBC to this standard, shall we?

Filed Under: olympics, scarcity
Companies: nbc universal

Covering Up Any Brand In Beijing That Hasn't Paid To Sponsor The Olympics

from the ip-insanity dept

Every time you think that the Olympics' bizarre obsession with extra-ordinary protections on intellectual property took a step beyond ridiculous, you were probably just underestimating the International Olympic Committee, who will just keep going further and further. You may recall the efforts put forth by the IOC to get special trademarks on certain words, like 2010 and Vancouver and 2012 and London, since that's where the next two Olympics will take place. While it seems ridiculous to be able to get trademarks on such things (and goes against the very purpose of trademark law), politicians seem to bow down to the Olympics. But that was just the start.

The Olympics has threatened any non-sponsor advertiser from even mentioning the Olympics, banned people in the stands from wearing clothing that has the logos of competitors to sponsors and even insisted that its security technology choices would be limited to sponsors, even if others had better technology.

The latest, however, may be the most ridiculous. All over Beijing, the brands of non-sponsors are being covered up by Olympic officials so that no one thinks that faucet maker American Standard got a "free ride." Seriously. They're putting tape over the brand name on faucets. And on light switches. And the headphones used by reporters and many other places where perfectly normal brands might occur. They've even covered up the name of a major hotel in Beijing, because it's not an Olympic sponsor.

In media centers, dormitories and arena bathrooms, pieces of tape cover logos of fire extinguishers, light switches, thermostats, bedroom night tables, soap dispensers and urinals. The Taiden Industrial translation headsets in a large conference room have had their logos covered, as have the American Standard faucets in the bathrooms nearby, and the ThyssenKrupp escalators down the hall. Even the sign atop the InterContinental Beijing Beichen hotel, attached to the Main Press Center, has been obscured by an Olympic cloth wrap. InterContinental Hotels Group isn't an Olympic sponsor.

Why? Well, the IOC claims that it's necessary:

The International Olympic Committee says that such "brand protection" is essential for the Games to raise the corporate money that keeps them going and growing. The Games get 40% of their revenue from sponsors, with the rest coming from broadcast rights, ticketing and licensing.

A few quick responses to that whopper of a statement:

• The purpose of trademark law is not to protect the ability of the Olympics to make a profit. It's to avoid people being confused into thinking one product is made by someone else.
• Even if it's important for the Olympics to make money off of sponsors, it's difficult to see why that would necessitate blocking everyone else's brands. No other event does this, and those events make out just fine.
• Couldn't some of the covered up brands make the exact same response back? American Standard sold its faucets at a certain price, knowing that it would get some brand recognition from having its brand on the faucets. By blocking that, aren't the Olympics denying American Standard's "essential brand protection" that it needs to keep making money?

Once again, the true spirit of the Olympic games seems to be in absolutely trashing the meaning and purpose of intellectual property laws.

Filed Under: beijing, international olympic committee, olympics, trademarks

NBC Admits It Was Wrong To Worry About Online Olympics Watching Cannibalizing TV Viewing

from the who-woulda-thunk-it? dept

NBC Universal has a long history of totally misunderstanding the relationship between online video and TV video. Despite plenty of evidence to the contrary (including from NBC's own competitor, CBS, which was quick to point out that more online watching resulted in more TV watching), NBC has insisted that online watching somehow cannibalizes TV viewers. That explains why its online Olympics offerings are so weak -- not showing any of the really interesting stuff until many hours after its been broadcast on TV.

Amazingly, NBC execs seem to actually be admitting they made a pretty big mistake here. In going over their own research, they're finally realizing that rather than cannibalizing, people watching on either TV or online only seems to get them to watch more of the other, as it just makes them more interested in the Olympics as a whole. Of course, given how NBC has behaved in the past, don't expect it to recognize this in other parts of its business (or, say, start broadcasting stuff online before the tape delay on TV). Also, don't expect it to realize that perhaps its lawsuit against Redlasso is totally misguided, even though Redlasso helps more people see NBC content online.

Filed Under: cannibalize, internet, olympics, tv, video
Companies: nbc universal

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.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, ioc, olympics, takedowns

So About That Plan To Drop The Great Firewall For Olympics Reporters? Yeah, Forget That...

from the whoops dept

Back in February, there were some rumors making the rounds that the Chinese gov't was planning to drop its "Great Firewall" of internet censorship, to make sure that reporters had full access to the internet as necessary. Then, in April, the International Olympic Committee specifically asked government censors to drop the filters during the Olympics. Even that request seemed sketchy, as the IOC said that leaving the filters in place would "reflect poorly" on China. I would think that having the filters in the first place (and putting them back after the Olympics) would also "reflect poorly" on China, but that's a separate discussion.

However, what really does reflect poorly is the news that China hasn't dropped the filters at all. Journalists are complaining, but apparently the Chinese censors and the IOC have come to a compromise: China won't censor any Olympics websites. Unless they mention Tibet or something. In other words, China hasn't really loosened the Great Firewall at all.

Filed Under: censorship, china, great firewall, olympics, reporters