IOC Forces School To Remove Rings From Crest For Some Reason

from the champions-of-bullying dept

Have you thought about the Olympics lately? No? Then I guess you didn't drive past any of the tiny little schools in this itty bitty school district in the Poconos in Pennsylvania that serves a population of almost twenty-five thousand whole people, because, if you had, the International Olympic Committee is quite certain you would have been all, "Oh, look, that must be a school run by the Olympics for some reason." Otherwise, the IOC's pressuring the district to re-draw this district crest would make no sense.

You can probably spot the source of the problem immediately. It's those damned rings at the top-left, of course, and the IOC ain't happy that some stupid little learning institution could think that those rings could be incorporated in a logo. After all, the Olympics has nothing to do with learning, with a cooperative spirit, or with domestic institutions. Which is exactly what has me questioning why there is any trademark standing to begin with. After all, the two entities aren't competing in any kind of marketplace and the IOC, notoriously trademark-protect-y, has allowed the Wallenpaupack's district crest to exist since the 1970's.

Now, however, the IOC has convinced the school district that it must come up with a new crest. Quite unfortunately, the IOC even appears to have district officials convinced that the trademark claim is all super-legitimate.

“They obviously have a legitimate concern. It’s a trademarked item. We do have to come up with a plan of phasing it out,” said Superintendent Michael Silsby. Phasing out the rings because Silsby said an attorney for the U.S. Olympic Committee called last week, saying the school could no longer use the rings to represent athletics.

No, that isn't a legitimate concern, even if narrowly applied to athletic teams, because there's no commerce or competition here. This was simply the IOC, through the domestic USOC, bullying a school because it felt like it. Or maybe the USOC lawyers found some downtime and decided to fill it up smacking around schools. Either way, nothing about this is born out of a legitimate concern.

The district is reportedly going to have students create the new crest, which is all well and good, but that doesn't remove the bile from my mouth over the USOC's actions. You folks must be so proud...

Filed Under: crest, ioc, olympics, poconos, schools, trademark, usoc

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

IOC: No Chinese Internet Filters During Olympics; All Other Times It's Fine

from the why-just-for-the-olympics? dept

Back in February, a New Yorker story claimed that China was planning to disable its "Great Firewall" for the Olympics, so it may not mean very much to hear that the International Olympic Committee is now demanding that China do exactly that. If the Chinese government was already planning on opening up the internet, it's pretty weak to then demand it anyway. Besides, there does seem to be something rather sketchy about the IOC demanding China drop the firewall just for the Olympics, saying it "would reflect very poorly" on the country. Does it not "would reflect very poorly" on China during the rest of the time as well? It's a cheap ploy for the IOC to demand the filters be taken down just for that period of time. It gives the IOC publicity as standing up to censorship, even though it doesn't care what happens when the Olympics aren't in town.

Filed Under: china, filters, great firewall, ioc, olympics