Businesses To Be Censored on Use of Olympics 520
pitpe writes "The BBC reports that the proposed London 2012 Olympics Bill bans the use of words related to the Olympics by non-sponsors, including 'Olympic', '2012', 'gold', 'summer' and 'games', amongst others. The bill is aimed at
ensuring corporate sponsors, who have provided £790m of the IOC's £2.25bn marketing revenue over the last four years, will not be deterred by 'ambush marketing' where rivals to the official sponsors try to take advantage, but businesses warn it could make it technically illegal for pubs to use chalkboards to flag up coverage of the Games." From the article: "The London 2012 website has already posted a warning listing a string of Olympic-related words and images that are off limits to all but official sponsors. And advertisers' representatives have criticised the new Olympics bill because they believe it will make it almost impossible for most companies to even acknowledge that the Games are happening without getting into trouble. "
UK Govt Introduces Reserved Olympic Letter Law (Score:5, Funny)
Prime Minister Tony Blair passionately, though unintelligibly, defended the controversial law, saying that "t[h]e I[O]C s [h]ave [it] [q]uite cl[ea]r that [o]ur role [is] [t]o def[en]d the i[n]ve[stm]en[t]s of [l]egiti[mat]e [adve]rti[s]er[s]" who have signed on with the IOC.
Blair also pointed to the limited timeframe of the bill, which only allows surveillance during a two-year period before and after the bill, and said that this showed that public opinion had been considered strongly during the formulation period. "[Wh]at m[or]e [d]o th[ey] wa[nt]?" he asked rhetorically
Free Software Foundation founder and figurehead Richard M. Stallman was unavailable comment. A source close to the activist said that "he's working on renaming GCC in Cyrillic".
The games formerly known as the olymipcs... (Score:3, Funny)
1st Amendment (Score:3, Funny)
Queen to Rook 1 (Score:4, Funny)
Where the hell do they get off selling "Summer 2012" to some multinational corporation like the IOC? Those are English words, and this is England. Isn't this kind of thing the reason the English keep the Queen around? Isn't it "the Queen's English"? Is she getting some kind of kickback, which requires her to sell out her subjects? Get Elizabeth in here, Slashdot wants to talk with her.
Suggested Ad Terminology (Score:5, Funny)
or
The international athletic event where people from all countries use performance-enhancing drugs is now in London (and no it's not the Tour de France).
Re:So, what else is new? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Advertise this (Score:4, Funny)
There won't be olympics in 2012 anyways... (Score:5, Funny)
For those who don't know about John [abovetopsecret.com] Titor [wikipedia.org]
P.S. Anyone know where I can find that video of him traveling time in his car when he goes BACK TO THE FUTURE?
Re:Ahh, Europe! (Score:1, Funny)
Ask the average Brit -- they're not Europeans.
Europe?! (Score:2, Funny)
Actually, it's a great opportunity. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yeah, and a band too... (Score:3, Funny)
Ok, so technically most of the words they listed are English words, and English wasn't around yet during the early 8th century BCE, when the games started.
Re:The games formerly known as the olymipcs... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Ahh, Europe! (Score:3, Funny)
Let's be honest - that's not difficult, is it? :)
A modest proposal (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Ahh, Europe! (Score:3, Funny)
Well, Im screwed twice today then (Score:4, Funny)
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/16/1
Re:Ahh, Europe! (Score:3, Funny)
XBOX.
Re:hehe (Score:3, Funny)
Blackadder: "Baldrick, have you no idea what irony is?"
Baldrick: "Yeah! It's like goldy and bronzy, only it's made of iron."
Re:This is nothing new (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Ahh, Europe! (Score:3, Funny)
Note that the OP seems to be a follower of the new theory of Intelligent Climate Control, which has been gaining ground in replacing the obsolete and largely discredited hypothesis that seasonal climate changes are caused by the tilt of the Earth's axis of rotation, which causes one of the two hemispheres to be exposed to more sunlight, depending on the Earth's position in its orbit around the Sun.
Intelligent Climate Control states that the movement of celestial bodies is too complicated to understand through the laws of physics, and therefore climate changes must be the result of arbitrary control by a higher being.
Re:UK Govt Introduces Reserved Olympic Letter Law (Score:5, Funny)
Re:news reporting (Score:4, Funny)
(somewhere deep in the Ministry of Truth) (Score:2, Funny)
(Remember: Any deviation, no matter how slight, may indicate a thought criminal. I'm not a petty grammar Nazi, I'm watching your back!)
Related bash.org (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Banning the use of the year? (Score:3, Funny)
Perhaps the IOC(tm)(c), armed with its cadre of lawyers and time travel technology, decided to sue them for actually using this year. Ancient Mayan astronomers, upon marking December 21st, 2012(tm)(c), on their calendars may have been assaulted by futuristic IOC(tm)(c) lawyers, possessing knowledge of the future(tm)(c), which would allow them to sue based on laws that did not yet exist(United States Patent #836,236,582,353,873,122). These impeccably dressed lawyers would be conceived as demons, as they rampaged mercilessly through the Mayan empire, bringing suit to every individual who had the audacity to own a Mayan Calendar that included the year 2012(tm)(c). Like SCO(tm), the IOC(tm)(c) Lawyers selected a time period when every Mayan citizen had a calendar that included 2012(tm)(c), so as to maximize the targets they could bring suit against (i.e. everyone in the Empire).
It is well known that the Mayan Empire died out almost overnight. In order to conduct a full scale invasion of this magnitude, one would require two time-travelling lawyers for every man, woman, and child in the Mayan Empire. The IOC(tm)(c) does indeed have this kind of manpower, with plenty to spare. It is suspected that the IOC(tm)(c) has conducted such temporal legal blitzkriegs against other peoples, such as Aztec Empire, the American Colonial town of Roanoke, and the crew of the fishing ship High Aim 6, for court rulings not mentioned here, because they will not exist until 2036(tm).
Solomon Kevin Chang
Re:The games formerly known as the olymipcs... (Score:4, Funny)
"07YM91CS"
And people said l33t would never catch on.
Advertising template for non sponsors (Score:5, Funny)
Example only:
(Black screen)
(each line of text fades in to white while the line is being read)
Voiceover: "You know why you are here,
We know why you are here,
We cannot say why you are here,
While you are here,
Eat at Hungry Jacks."
(fade in corporate logo)
(fade to black)
Sponsors to demand Olympic Letter Management (OLM) (Score:5, Funny)
"It's outrageuous!" exclaimed OLM spokesperson Bert Kneecapper, "After TrendySportingShoe(TM) spends billions buying Olympic (TM) naming rights, some thieving punk can steal our trademarks using a 20c crayon bought from any corner store!"
Under the OLM initiative, and device capable of reproducing alphabetic characters must implement a mechanism to honour the OLM Tradkemark flag, thereby preventing the device from reproducing trademarked sequences unless a valid licence exists. With time, they intend the service to extend to the enforcement of other text controls, such as micro-payments for use of famous quotes, and retrospective editing of history books.
Bert Kneecapper went on reject crayon manufacturer representations that the scheme was impractical, "Our members lose billions of dollars in un-earned revenue, how can they justify 20c crayons in the face of such flagerant theft?".
Oh come on (Score:5, Funny)
* (c), (R), Patent Pending, void where prohibited by law. "Olympic" is a registered trademark of the International Olympic Comittee. All materials and content related to the Olympic Games, including, but not limited to, images, illustrations, text, audio clips, and video clips, are protected by or consist of copyrights, trademarks, service marks, and/or other intellectual property rights ("Intellectual Property"). The Intellectual Property is governed and protected by United States and worldwide copyright, trademark, and/or other intellectual property laws and treaty provisions, privacy and publicity laws, and communications regulations and statutes. The Intellectual Property is owned or controlled by us or other parties that have licensed to us the right to use their Intellectual Property or the right to market their products and/or services (collectively the "IP Providers").
You agree to abide by all additional copyright notices, information, or restrictions contained in any material or content on the Site. Other than as may be expressly permitted by us, in writing, (i) the Intellectual Property is provided solely for your personal, non-commercial use; and you may download any Intellectual Property solely for your personal, non-commercial use, consistent with these Terms, provided that you maintain all copyright and other notices contained in such Intellectual Property. You may not copy, reproduce, republish, upload, post, transmit, distribute, and/or exploit any Intellectual Property in any way (including by e-mail or other electronic means) without our prior written consent or that of the IP Providers - particularly the words 'Olympic', 'games', 'gold', 'silver', 'bronze', 'doping scandal', 'bribery', and other words that are implicit in the Olympic Games. Modification of any Intellectual Property or use of any Intellectual Property for any other purpose is a violation of the copyrights, trademark rights, and other proprietary rights; that includes photoshopped naughty images of Jacques Rogge. The use of any Intellectual Property on any other site or networked computer environment, or maintaining unauthorized links to the Site, is prohibited by these Terms.
Re:UK Govt Introduces Reserved Olympic Letter Law (Score:3, Funny)
I dare you all (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Me too. (Score:3, Funny)
In other news... (Score:3, Funny)
LONDON (Reuters) - In a press release, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) today announced its intention to pursue legal action against Robert Louis Stevenson, over his poem Summer Sun [bartleby.com], for two "illicit" uses of the word "golden", and one of the word "summer".
Stevenson, being long dead, declined to respond. However, visitors to his grave on Mount Vaea on Upolu, Samoa, have reported hearing a grinding sound from underground, as of something rotating in the dirt.
Re:Summer 2012 (Score:2, Funny)
Re:How can it be trademarked? (Score:3, Funny)
And in news just in, Mount Olympus has been summonsed to appear in court in London for breach of the 2012 Olympic Corporation's trademark.
Re:I have an idea... (Score:3, Funny)
The procedure is simple - before any civil court case is allowed to proceed, the first stage is a meeting between the judge, plaintiff and defendant. During this meeting all three go out onto the street and randomly pick three passers-by, who are then taken back to the judge's chamber.
Each party then has three minutes to make their case to this "jury" (plaintiff goes first). If, at the end of the three minutes, the majority of the three don't want to slap the living shit out of the plaintiff, the case is allowed to proceed.
Otherwise, and optionally, the jury-members would then be allowed to actually slap the shit out of the plaintiff for a five-minute period.
I think this simple reform would do a great deal to alleviate the massive overload on our judicial system, slow or stem the flow of money from everyone else into the legal industry, promote personal responsibility, discourage frivolous lawsuits and make (some types of) jury duty actually fun.
"I went to McDonalds and thre hot coffee in my lap, and it was hot!". Slap!
"I want to sue this guy's company because he used the word 'Olympics', in an Olympic year, in the city where the Olympics were taking place! What a bastard!" Slap!
Who's with me? Write your congressman.
Now we know why we eat snickers (Score:3, Funny)
Damn you Mars!
I hope Heineken make an 'illegal' NOT THE OLYMPICS can of lager.
Like they did with the Pint can of Lager 'contravenes some daft euro law!!'
Great, more British than British!
Only in America... (Score:1, Funny)
Only in America could such a bill....oh.....wait....
Re:UK Govt Introduces Reserved Olympic Letter Law (Score:5, Funny)
The "Asshole Games"(tm)?
Has a certain ring^H^H^H^Hasshole to it, doesn't it?.
Alternatively, one could solicit a bid from microsoft to buy the entire british language, so that any use outside properly licensed Microsoft products incurs extra fees, includiong from the IOC. Just think how much money the government could make!