IOC Orders Blogger To Take Down Video 389
An anonymous reader writes "The International Olympic Committee has ordered a blogger to remove a video from his website showing the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili. The IOC asserts that it owns all the rights to all images taken at the games, and only licensed broadcasters can use them. However, the blogger, Stephen Pate, points to a Canadian law that allows copyrighted images to be used in newsworthy cases."
Nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
The IOC has taken an extreme protectionist stance on all its content for many years. It doesn't matter if it's fair use or not, the IOC will object on principle.
The Olympics are big money.
Re:Mirror please! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
The IOC has taken an extreme protectionist stance on all its content for many years. It doesn't matter if it's fair use or not, the IOC will object on principle.
The Olympics are big money.
I think this actually IS a new low for the IOC. They're going to profit from the images taken at the games, that's normal.
Ordering a blogger to take down video would be pretty low and stupid as is: as if someone is going to watch someone's blog instead of the games on NBC or whatever. That's absurd. A blogger is no competition.
What takes this to a whole new level is that it's the death of a competitor.... so... THE IOC IS HOPING TO PROFIT FROM THE VIDEO OF THIS ATHELETE DYING?!?
Jesus.
Were it not the IOC I would assume this was done in the name of taste. People shouldn't be watching videos of a tragic event like this. But it being the IOC, and seeing as they just claimed Lindsey Vonn's name (or exclusive rights to use it in advertising... whatever...), I have to think that this is -at best- an attempt to set a precedent that absolutely all video from the olympics are absolutely the IOCs property, and can't be shown anywhere. More likely, they're going to try to sell the video to news organizations and want a fucking monopoly.
Re:Nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
If we started making exceptions to freedom of speech/press every time somebody got offended, then we would be left with nothing.
Re:Nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nothing new (Score:3, Insightful)
I shudder to think what the IOC might be able to get away with should ACTA become law. It's a shame how far we've strayed from its original purpose. Copyright was never supposed to enable this kind of abuse.
Re:Nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Locality blocks... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you comply with laws from all over the world then you can't post anything online.
Re:Locality blocks... (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember, if you're a copyright holder, you'd better be prepared to suck it down. The internet is a global network, and the law varies all over the world.
Fixed it for you.
Re:Nothing new (Score:2, Insightful)
Why do you care?
Why are you free enough to care?
Re:Nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you think they want to cut it out to "protect the family of the deceased"? They care about the reputation of their precious cash cow. And that ain't the athletes. They're just the necessary evil to milk the whole deal.
Re:All images, of all things, in all places, (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, IOC, for all I care you can keep it.
Could you keep it far away so at least the TV channels ain't clogged with your crap and I could actually watch something interesting.
Re:Nothing new (Score:2, Insightful)
I saw it on the NBC nightly news the day that it happened. The national news.
I was somewhat horrified.
Re:Nothing new (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that's not quite what's happening here. I think the IOC is afraid that the more the video is watched, the more negative associations people will have with the Olympics, and the fewer viewers they'll get. They're hoping to lose as little as possible after this tragedy.
So rather than hoping to make money off the death of an athlete, they're hoping the death of an athlete doesn't damage their profits? I fail to see that much difference between those two possibilities.
Re:Nothing new (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe if they'd listen to the viewers complaining Olympics after Olympics that we want less human interest stories and more events. Events are going on there ALL DAY. The downhill skiers aren't waiting for the Hockey game to be over; they have TONS of actual events they could be showing non-stop during their relatively few hours of Olympics broadcasts. If it means that we're not just watching Americans, fine! I know people living here from all over the world, we want to see everything, whether an American is involved or not.
Re:Nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nothing new (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep, and the "Olympic Movement" is given special rights under US Laws
It used to be that hosting olympic events was a money-maker for the cities involved. However recently data shows that towns that host Olympics are actually losing out. I don't agree with "special privileges" for anyone, but it's understandable to see how they can happen where there is a source of income for the state. But when the state is trying to "protect" something that is actually costing tax payer dollars, it's time to repeal laws (or repeal the damned state).
Re:Nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
So rather than hoping to make money off the death of an athlete, they're hoping the death of an athlete doesn't damage their profits? I fail to see that much difference between those two possibilities.
It's the difference between hiring a hit man and hushing up a family suicide.
Re:I want my Streisand effect NOW! (Score:2, Insightful)
From another source:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/lazyjock/117509.flv [amazonaws.com]
Using Amazon S3 is pretty good way to ensure that when this gets modded +5, it's still available.
I'd hate to be the guy who's paying the bill on that bucket...
Re:Nothing new (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nothing new (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nothing new (Score:1, Insightful)
Excuse me, but over here in my opinion, I want my (Mature enough to see it) children to see this video and hear that sickening CLANG so they will think twice about doing something fast and reckless.
My stomach turned over twice watching this man die, but it can not be undone. And furthermore, why do they have fucking steel I beams bordering this track? Shouldn't
a luge track be surrounded by marshmallows, giant pillows, air bags, etc......
Re:Nothing new (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't see a reason why they couldn't have some sort of plexiglass or other clear covering that comes up higher, so if someone is ejected from their sled they hit the plexiglass and fall back into the run, rather than hitting something (like a pole) outside of it.
Also, it is very tragic that he died, but this is also a good time to realize that sports like this are inherently dangerous and sometimes this is the outcome, no matter what precautions are taken (say the pole had been padded, who knows if he would have lived, been paralyzed, or still died). I think the athletes are more accepting of this outcome than their families. I cycle a LOT during the summer, and I hate to think what would happen if my front tire were to fail while going down a hill at 35 MPH, for example. It doesn't stop me from participating in a sport that I love though, and I imagine with pro athletes it's probably the same.
I'd like to ask you (Score:5, Insightful)
People shouldn't be watching videos of a tragic event like this.
Who are you, and why are you deciding what should I watch?
IOC CYA (Score:2, Insightful)
The IOC hours after the deadly crash immediately said (before an legitimate investigation could even begin, let alone finish) that it was the luger's fault, and that there was nothing wrong with the course, even though there were numerous complaints about the course prior to the crash. So even though the IOC said there was nothing wrong with the course, and that it was luger-error, they immediately wrapped the posts with pads, built taller walls throughout the the course, and then started the lugers lower down on the course, in order to slow them down.
I'm sorry, but you don't get to say, "The course is fine," and then also get to change it immediately after a crash.
I love to watch the Olympic athletes compete, but the IOC has been a bunch of corrupt bastards for decades.
Re:Nothing new (Score:4, Insightful)
If we started making exceptions to freedom of speech/press every time somebody got offended, then we would be left with nothing.
I think there's a pretty clear line between "not showing someone getting killed" and "not showing anything offensive to anyone."
It's my opinion however that "not showing someone dying" should not be enforced by law, enforced by corporate interests, and especially not barred by copyright law used as a weapon by corporate interests. Blogger showing it was bad, IOC was even worse.
Re:Hopefully it's a matter of taste (Score:3, Insightful)
It's in the interest of Olympic athletes to keep it online so everyone can see that the track was badly designed. They built one of the fastest luge tracks ever and just assumed that nobody would ever jump the wall. They were tragically wrong, and it was avoidable. Wrapping the steel pole he collided with in foam would probably have been sufficient to save his life, though he wouldn't have escaped without injury. Installing a higher section of non-iced wall, possibly made of clear plastic, would have prevented him from colliding with the pole at all. He might have been able to finish the track, and his time would have been abysmal for making the mistake he made that took him off the ice, but at least he would have lived.
But you don't have to take my word for it, because the video is online and you can watch what happens and judge for yourself.
Alternatively, if you don't care what happens to Olympic athletes, the video is online, so you don't have to see it if you don't specifically follow a link.
Re:Nothing new (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, when I watch cars going around in a circle for hours and hours, I'm waiting to see the crash. That's what most people are doing. There is no other reason. Like I said, if we were looking to reward the fastest guy, we'd run them one at a time and use a stopwatch. Much safer. (They DO that during the time trials. Notice how the time trials rarely make it to the telly? The only time I've ever seen time trials broadcast is years ago right before Indianapolis, and that was close to Indy and during the otherwise boring holiday weekend.)
If we were looking for the best driver, we'd run them one at a time so he wouldn't be forced into choosing the worst path just to keep hitting someone else. So just why DO we run them all at the same time, on the same course, for hours upon end, if we aren't looking for the times when they crash?
That's human nature. "Predictable" doesn't glue eyes to the telly. If every stone thrown during a curling match went exactly where it was intended, eyes would glaze over by the end of the first end and nobody would watch that, either.
Re:Nothing new (Score:3, Insightful)
If that blogger had given a damn about the moral high road, he wouldn't have posted the video in the first place. Please note that the day it happened, NBC announced that they would not be airing the footage again and that the man's father has said that he doesn't want to watch it. The only reason to post it was so that ghouls could get their vicarious thrills over and over again by watching a man DIE.
Re:Nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
You have to keep in mind that the Canadian lugers had been practicing on the course for two years prior to the games, without serious incident. While it's not fair to place blame solely on the shoulders of the luger in this case, it also isn't fair to suggest that the course was designed to be a deathtrap or "designed with deadly obstacles a minor mistake away". The course was designed to be fast and challenging, though some argue it was perhaps too fast.
The guy make a mistake, and it cost him his life, and that's tragic. The course was designed maybe 10kph faster than the norm, which may have magnified the impact of his mistake. Though based on the general negative raction the other lugers had to moving down the starting position, I'd say any claim that the incident happened solely because the course was expressly designed to be a death trap are more than slightly exagerrated. Lugers like challenging and they like fast even more. they absolutely love a combination of fast and challenging, otherwise they woudn't be hurling themselves down a track at 140+ kph, would they?
And the skiing example? I reckon you didn't catch the womens' alpine downhill last week, where a huge portion of the skiiers whiped out, including Anja Paerson (most decorated aline skiier, all time) botching her landing and rolling something like 200 meters to the finish. She got up on her own eventually, others had to be airlifted out. Nobody argued that the course was designed to be a death trap. The skiiers may have commented that it was a tough course, but not one, especially not the ones who didn't make it all the way down, so much as suggested that it was meant to be dangerous. They knew going in that it was a tough, technical course.
The risk of injury (or worse) is something you're well aware of and accept in any sport than involves moving downhill at breakneck speed while requiring hairpin maneuvering. You might as well argue that the luge, bobsleigh, skelleton and alpine skiing as sports, are "with deadly obstacles a minor mistake away" since they all involve hurling oneself down at breakneck speeds, while requiring pinpoint accuracy in maneuvering. The athletes were well aware of what the sport entails and the risks involved were when they signed up. Let's throw in the ski jump as well, $deity knows you can break your neck vaulting yourself 90-100+ meters at high speed. And hell. the figure skating system should be redesigned as well, after that poor Candaian girl got kicked sqaure in the face by her partner.
This isn't about "covering up" their "shame". It's about tastelessness. A news articl would have sufficed, and picture of the aftermath would have been plenty. but a video of someone hitting a pillar at 150KpH? It's certainly more attention grabbing, I'll give 'em that.
Re:Nothing new (Score:3, Insightful)
As pointed out elsewhere, the NBC Olympic coverage has not kept up with how people want to consume media these days.
But pirates rejoice, because EZTV's coverage has been perfect. :P
Re:Locality blocks... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nothing new (Score:4, Insightful)
Because, you know, having a fascination with death, the end of us all, the foundation of every major religion, makes you evil.
Re:Nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes I agree, but he could offer to take it down out of concern for the families privacy rather than because the IOC has asked him to. Take the Moral high road and keep your freedom of speech at the same time. why not, you lose little. Blog about it by all means but the goreporn value is pretty nil anyway.
What privacy? The dude died during the olympics - this isn't a private matter. And if you need to take something down, then you don't have free speech. Sure, it's poor taste, but it's also news.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Its wrong to have pillars that close to the tra (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet, here we are discussing it. I think it is fine for pillars to be that close, on a track for a sport that is participated in voluntarily and with full knowledge that those pillars are there. All it would have taken is for the lugers to say "we aren't going down that course with those pillars there", if it were so clear that the pillars shouldn't have been there.
It is absolute stupid the way the track was designed and that is the flaw. The guy would not have died if its was not for the pillars.
The guy would not have died if he didn't get on a tiny little sled and push himself down the start of an icy half-tube where the only exit other than the far end was off the side and into hard metal objects.
Lugers can still die if they take a wall too high and capsize, smashing their heads into the solid ice track.
If you want to remove all means of death in the sport of luge, you might as well not luge at all. In fact, you won't be luging. You'll have to have a solid tube filled with soft water (instead of the open ice-caked half-tube). That's the "thrill ride" at a water park. How exciting. And someone could still drown if they aren't careful.
You could compare that to have trees around a racing circuit directly beside the track and no run off area ...
How about solid concrete walls at most car race tracks?
Bugger off IOC and let the rest of the world see what is wrong so it can be prevented next time.
Next on NBC, the 2046 winter olympics. At 8PM, the US and Canada face off for the snowball fights, followed by the mackeral slapping contest between Great Britain and France. At 11PM, Greece and Latvia compete in 'walk around the block', and then Bolivia and Japan face off in a rematch of the famous 2042 "fill the slurpee cup as full as you can without spilling" contest. Stay tuned...
Re:Nothing new (Score:2, Insightful)
People think a laws are the answer and that he should stand up for freedom. But this is case of the Olympics using a bazooka to swat a mosquito.
The Olympics should have contact him privately ask him to take down the video on behalf of the family. If he refused to comply, use your broadcasting powers to shame him as nothing more than a scummy sensational journalist.
Instead now it's about rights and very public. The man has no public goodwill to lose and the Olympics are losing what little they have. Also lawyers = $$$.
We don't need new laws, or talk about freedom of speech. We need people to be more effective at communicating their needs.
Idiots
Re:Nothing new (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's outrageous that courses are designed with such an obvious lack of safety precautions. If the wall had been higher, he wouldn't have slammed into the pillars. In every other industry such a lack of OHS would be damning, yet it's acceptable here for some reason.
Re:Nothing new (Score:4, Insightful)
I think there's a pretty clear line between "not showing someone getting killed" and "not showing anything offensive to anyone."
I don't. You might argue that there is a scale on one end is grandma baking apple pie and the other end is something like a snuff film.
But the death of an athlete on the field at the olympics is nearly as important as the death of Neda Agha-Soltan, maybe even moreso depending on your perspective.
My point being (a) its real grey to begin with, nowhere near a clear line and (b) the circumstances of a death affect the offensiveness of its publication.
Re:Nothing new (Score:3, Insightful)
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Evelyn_Beatrice_Hall. I think most folks here are of the opinion that blocking material that may be objectionable to some is much worse than allowing it to stand on its own.
Re:Nothing new (Score:4, Insightful)
He's a Canadian citizen reporting on a Canadian sporting event, his domain is registered to a Charlottetown, CA address via a Canadian name register. So far he's got a good case to give the big FU to the IOC (which I wholly support).
Unfortunately it looks as though his site is hosted in Chesterfield, USA (according to cqcounter's visual traceroute), so the IOC may be able to leverage a shut down at the hosting provider. Sometimes it's unfortunate that the Internet is international.
Re:my response to IOC (Score:3, Insightful)
This assumes that the sun would not exist were it not for you, so that you could actually copyright the sun and all audio-visual representations thereof.
I guess I'll know for sure tomorrow, because it's night time here now. If the sun doesn't come up tomorrow, I'll know I violated the DRM you put on it...
The fact that the sun came up three weeks ago isn't news anymore, just like the fact that someone rammed themselves into a pole on the luge course two weeks ago isn't. The "news" value of the video is gone; it is solely the gruesome nature that remains as a draw.
Re:Nothing new (Score:2, Insightful)
Please note that the day it happened, NBC announced that they would not be airing the footage again and that the man's father has said that he doesn't want to watch it
Hmmm that's funny. NBC spent most of the day replaying the damn video. And when they quit replaying it, they still kept showing still images of him halfway wrapped around the pillar. And have continued to do so days after the event.
The wants & wishes of the family mean nothing here. Do you really think that the Kennedy family gets warm fuzzy feelings every time they see JFK's head explode?
It's easy for you to call other people "ghouls" as if there is a small section of society that delights in death while the rest of us hate the thought of it. Meanwhile every time there is an auto wreck traffic backs up for miles as people rubberneck, wanting to see the carnage. The fact of the matter is that humans are obsessed with death, we have a morbid fascination with it that prevents us from looking away, and in fact draws us in closer when it happens. Those who feel no such fascination are actually an extreme minority... and more than likely are simply lying to themselves.
My wife hasn't seen the video, she was working that day, and she didn't bother looking for it online. But you're saying that she should not be able to see it herself, although millions upon millions of other people already saw it, because... it will make the parents feel bad?
The moral highroad in this case IS to post the video. To do otherwise would violate the duty of the press to report news. The duty of the media is to spread information, not to restrict it, & it is not their duty to coddle those who might be offended by such news.
Re:Nothing new (Score:3, Insightful)
I would take it down (for the family's sake)...
And then immediately replace it with another video of a different luger (perhaps one that crashed but survived). I will not cave-in to demands that I limit my free speech rights, otherwise companies could use copyright to censor uncomfortable things. Like Toyota claiming copyright over a video of one of their cars going off a cliff. Or Marlboro claiming copyright over an advertisement of an actor who later died from smoking-related cancer. Or Microsoft claiming copyright to make me remove a Vista ad that claimed it would work on only 256 megabytes (got to cover that up).
Or a school claiming copyright over a vid which reveals they were spying on kids via laptops.
Copyright claims can be abused to censor the news to eliminate negative publicity.
And right now, I think that's what the IOC's ultimate goal is.
Re:Nothing new (Score:3, Insightful)
>>>If that blogger had given a damn about the moral high road, he wouldn't have posted the video in the first place
Here: http://www.fatalfailblog.com/ [fatalfailblog.com]
I'm not posting this because I'm a "ghoul" but because I think it's educational. When I first saw how twisted/dismantled these humans were, simply because of a car crash, it got me to thinking that I don't really need to drive 85 to get to work. 60-65 mph will still get me there in a decent amount of time, and if I impact anything, there will be about 50% less kinetic energy to rip apart my body.
Re:Nothing new (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, but a DMCA takedown notice doesn't make sense. The site is Canadian (so no DMCA, lack of jurisdiction), and the use of the video conforms to Canadian copyright laws wrt news.
DMCA notices only affect 5% of the worlds' population.
Re:Nothing new (Score:3, Insightful)
>>>but in the video he doesn't even get his hands in front of his head
Since he hit the steel beam with the back of his head, and human arms don't bend backwards like that, the suggestion you offer would not be possible. The man was doomed, and even if he had superhuman reflexes, there's nothing he could have done to stop his head from slamming against that steel beam.
Of course you would have known this yourself, but since the IOC is censoring the video, there was no way to double-check it prior to posting, so all you had to go on was fuzzy memory. Pretty soon (2-3 years) we'll forget the death was caused by poor safety design (steel beams along track), and the IOC will have accomplished its goal to cover its ass. (Yes that's a slam against censorship.)
Re:Nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a downhill skier myself. I'm well aware of the risks in skiing, and am amazed at the crashes that these athletes walk away from. However, there's a very specific reason why there are no trees on the course, and why there's netting all around. People crash, and these things are designed to minimize catastrophic injuries if something does go wrong. Finally, skiers have far more control over speed and direction than the lugers.
And yet, you won't find large metal beams around a corner of a downhill course - or anywhere that isn't protected by netting or foam.
Yes, Canadian lugers practiced without any deaths. But if you look at the track, what happened to the Georgian luger was a guaranteed event once the sled hit the inside edge. Just because no one else had died before doesn't mean that the track was designed in a fashion that minimized risks. Just shaving the inside of the track to make it impossible for the sled to just rid up and over would have drastically reduced the speed.
As for your examples of what else should be redesigned - again, there's a difference between designing something to be more dangerous than necessary and changing the sport. Raising the wall, putting padding on, cutting the inside corner - none of that would have reduced the speed or the difficulty of the course. All the other examples you provided change the sport. Understand the difference.
This isn't about "covering up" their "shame". It's about tastelessness. A news articl would have sufficed, and picture of the aftermath would have been plenty. but a video of someone hitting a pillar at 150KpH? It's certainly more attention grabbing, I'll give 'em that.
Really? The video is the only thing that demonstrates conclusively what happened. Everything else is hear say and assumption. I'm glad the video exists, because it allows me to cross-check claims and understand assertions.
You're not making a coherent argument (Score:1, Insightful)
What's the non-emotional reason for not showing the video? I haven't seen anything except "Oh, gee, that's in poor taste", which is not anything more than an appeal to emotion.
I was hoping for better here, honestly.
Re:Its wrong to have pillars that close to the tra (Score:3, Insightful)
It is wrong to have pillars that close to the track and Stephen Plate shows this to the rest of the world. Period! No discussion!
And yet, here we are discussing it. I think it is fine for pillars to be that close, on a track for a sport that is participated in voluntarily and with full knowledge that those pillars are there. All it would have taken is for the lugers to say "we aren't going down that course with those pillars there", if it were so clear that the pillars shouldn't have been there.
Of course the athletes can choose not to participate. However, most athletes have been training for years for this event, so the threshold for not participating is really high, even if they had a pool of sharks with friggin lasers at the bottom. Just because you don't have to participate, doesn't mean that the security measures can be inadequate. Simply raising the walls doesn't make the sport equivalent to kitten hugging
Live channels on the Internet (Score:3, Insightful)
Two points:
The IOC could still get their advertising revenues, and even direct-charge viewers. These seem like blindingly obvious ideas.
Why haven't they done this yet?
Re:Nothing new (Score:1, Insightful)
Honestly, your opinion is the one I expected to see here, and I have unfortunately not been disappointed.
This isn't about the content. This is about his right to post it.
And I, for one, am VERY sick of people who say things like "I'm in support of free speech, but..."
Either you're in favor of free speech, or you're in favor of censorship. One is the path to freedom, the other is the path to totalitarianism. There is no middle ground on this.