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.

Kevin Donovan is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Kevin Donovan and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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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.

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