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. "
Yeah, and a band too... (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, I love how they were given powers over a word that was around LONG before "The Games" were.
What a bunch of shit.
Banning the use of the year? (Score:3, Interesting)
unreasonable gits... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah? If by "engaging in the unauthorised use of the Olympic Marks" you mean by using them at all, how about you respect the people, and not make such fuchking unreasoanble demands in the first place?
Commercialization blows (Score:3, Interesting)
Advertise this (Score:5, Interesting)
It won't be long until athletes are winning bronze, silver and gold coke cans.
Re:This is nothing new (Score:3, Interesting)
They are only doing it becasue they know Olympic is pretty damn generic, older then the IOC, and a total perversion of copyright law.
Put the word 'Official' in your advertising. If someone else claimes to be an 'official olympic whatever' sue them. But pubs should be able to play anything on TV and advertising they are doing so.
This is like banning any company from using the word marathon for christ sake.
In Vancouver [2010] as Well (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Right (Score:2, Interesting)
(maybe the book should have been titled 2012 rather than 1984)
Re:This is nothing new (Score:5, Interesting)
Heaven help you if you're having a conference of some kind in London in the summer of 2012, you might get heavily fined when you try to promote it, even if it has _nothing_ to do with the Olympics, occurs at a different time (well it'd kind of have to since the city will likely be packed because of the Olympics) or date.
If you make games for children better make sure you don't inadvertantly advertise any as summer games, you'll break this law. Again, you could be advertising a glorified lawn sprinkler for kids to play games under in the summer heat but since you "combined" summer and games in your ad the law applies and you're screwed.
I'm sure you'll say "but they'll be reasonable and won't pursue those types of cases" but we already know how well that type of stuff works. You can find many cases of the RIAA & MPAA sending out Cease & Desist letters because they found files containing words that also are used in songs/movies they own but had nothing to do with them. I seem to remember one where the C&D referred to a file that was around 500kb in size, but the MPAA thought it was one of their movies. Rationality won't enter into the enforcement of this law, it'll get the same treatment, anything that looks like it applies will get slapped with at least a lawyergram and likely charges levied. Even if they company ends up off the hook they'll have paid a penalty for defending themselves for doing nothing wrong.
No matter how you look at it this is a very bad law, and very bad precedent. Why should the IOC be given sole ownership of common words beyond Olympic/Olympics? Most of those words are used a lot, and in non-olympic references. Even if you think the words are defensible, including the damn year is insane. I suppose everyone in London will have to be sure to avoid mentioning the year in advertising in 2012 just to be on the safe side.
Me too. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd like to see everyone just ignore them. Unless I hear that the Swedish platform diver loses her bathing suit top and its caught on the underwater film camera, I doubt I'll even be interested much in the results, much less the actual telecast. (btw - that happened in 1984, and the vcr happened to be running. For a lad at the tender age of 15, it was a good reason to watch the olympics.)
meh (Score:3, Interesting)
with the olympics becoming more and more like a professional sport with the advertising, lucrative contracts and shit, i am getting more and more turned off to it.
If a country wants to host the olympics, the requirement should be that it have ZERO corporate logo's anywhere on the properties of the stadiums. and that news stations can get equal coverage of the games.
Or better yet, LOTTERY off coverage of games. So that i dont have to flip through 12 channles of figure skating or gymnastics. I would like to check out some of the other sports--outside of what the news feeds think will get the best coverage.
grrrr
Re:The games formerly known as the olymipcs... (Score:3, Interesting)
The idea being that they only cover their own costs and don't generate any revenue. I'm getting sick of the obscene cost of the games as they currently exist, and those prices make it prohibitive for people to even get out and see events (even if they're able to).
I mean, look at the olympics in Greece, there were lots of events with the stands half empty or more - of course there are multiple events going on simultaneously, but I figure that ticket prices contributed rather strongly too...
N.
Same in Australia (Score:2, Interesting)
What about the other 1.46b? (Score:3, Interesting)
So where did the other 2.25bn - 790m = 1.46b come from? I'm guessing from country contributions which came from their taxpayers.
So do the taxpayors of these countries get to use all of these words too?
Re:There won't be olympics in 2012 anyways... (Score:1, Interesting)
go to the forums and you'll know what I mean... [godlikeproductions.com]
Anyways lessee here, civil war already started, that truck full of explosives that blew up in Utah was actually destined to be a staged terrorist attack by the NWO, uhm, maybe it was taken out by Saudi Arabian F-16s, and maybe the explosives were some secret substance made from reverse engineered alien technology that causes things to vaporize.
That 4 star general who was recently dismissed, because he was planning a coup attempt. Uhm, secret power struggle at the pentagon, news being suppressed, 82nd air borne has movement orders, all army [military?] leave has been canceled after [october 7th? (dates could be off)]. So 82nd is going to Chicago and 3 other cities which I can't remember what they were.
hmm, then there's the fact that London 7/7, as well as our 9/11, they just coincidentally were running "training exercises" for just these sort of terrorist scenarios... terrible timing confusing the response, etc. Some say it's a cover, NWO trademark, if they're exposed, well hey, we're just doing a readiness exercise. But then it goes live, and suddenly we have an "incident" for which the solution is the "totalitarian tiptoe" including regular folks losing freedom...
Now, Aug 28 IIRC in Charleston, NC, they're going to be doing another "exercise", this one is nuclear terror, the drill is to try and smuggle a nuke into the country via the harbor. So, some conspiracy nut jobs are wondering if this one won't "go live", and if knowledge of these plans, doesn't have something to do with that 4 star general being dismissed... Oh yeah that's right, it was sexual misconduct, no conspiracy here. Just crazy rantings....
Well, I dunno. I have no proof... But that's the rumor mill I've picked up on. Hope you were entertained...
A few years back (Score:5, Interesting)
The olypic games' sponsorship branch sued the pants off the small-business owner, to get him to change the name of his business. Eventually he had to relent, after the legal fees nearly bankrupted him.
Why did he fight it? Simple. The store was NAMED AFTER HIM, and he had been in business WITH A TRADEMARK ON "OLYPIC PIZZA" FOR OVER 10 YEARS!
So because the olypic sponsors didn't to eal with the "ambush advertising" this guy represented, he had to give up the business name he had in the area FIRST, his trademark, and couldn't even use his full name during local interviews.
Screw the olympics, and boycott every single damn company that sponsors them!
Re:I have an idea... (Score:3, Interesting)
Will you all stop dealing with those big corporations? Become self-employed, cheat on your taxes, steal your media, buy your goods locally and stop helping those motherfuckers! Goddammit, please, please stop! It's not that hard!
I'm going to go hit something now...
Seeing a predictable patern (Score:1, Interesting)
The truth is, sponsors paid for advertising seen by people watching the Olympics. This broadening definition is troubling but hardly new to much of North America.
Seeing a predictable pattern
Re:I have an idea... (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, maybe the correct strategy would be the opposite: Obey that law to the letter and don't even mention the olympic games. Simply ignore them. TV magazines don't write the olympic game time tables (you know, they are not sponsors, so how could they mention the olympic games?), the journalists (not being sponsors either) don't report about the games (they aren't sponsors, and how could you report without using those words anyway?),
Of course the problem of this approach is that it will not really work.
I've been against this from the beginning (Score:3, Interesting)
As a result of London winning the olympics, my council tax is going to go up. I have to pay more each month for the next several years, to make the IOC richer. What did I do wrong ? I simply picked the wrong place to live.
Apparantly about 300 businesses are being forced off their land for this circus as well, and the potential job losses look to number around 20,000 at the moment. This is 20,000 local people who will be out of work so that some people can run around in circles.
Olympics(tm) suck my balls(tm)! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:UK Govt Introduces Reserved Olympic Letter Law (Score:3, Interesting)
Misspelling is the best way around this dumbass law. All you Londoners take note:
Come to our pub and cheer for your favorite athlets during the 20012 Olypic sumer games!
On another note, would it be illegal to say, "We're not an official sponsor of the 2012 summer Olympic games in London"?
Re:Has it been four years already? (Score:2, Interesting)
More difficult that you may imagine. The 2008 games has three levels of corporate support. Will you be shunning the partners, the sponsors, or the exclusive suppliers? What about previous games - will you be boycotting them for life?
It will affect your TV viewing:
GE - so no NBC for you
Disney - so no ABC for you (or ESPN)
Sony - so no CBS for you
Also your movie/dvd watching habits will change:
GE - so no Universal for you
Disney - so no Miramax for you (or Touchstone)
Sony - so no Columbia for you
The list goes on and on. No Blockbuster, no Paramount, no BMG, no MGM, no Playstation. Philips sponsored the Olympics - so will you be buying CDs?
You've opened a can of worms for yourself by announcing a personal boycott of a few large mega-giga-omni-corporations: they really do run the way of life in our society now. Luckily, not in the world, just yet, but you can bet that they are working on that.
Sad, isn't it?
(*)Actually, not sure Disney ever sponsored a summer games