The IOC Joins the DMCA Censorship Club
Found on Techdirt on Thursday, 14 August 2008
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".
It was hardly surprising when the IOC sent a take-down notice to YouTube for a video posted by Students for a Free Tibet.
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.
Who cares about the IOC and those games anyway? A bunch of people meet to figure out who's best. Now that's all fine, but that's not what the games are about anymore. It's just money: who pays most for the exclusive rights, who pays most for product placement, who pays most for advertising breaks on TV. Plus all the payola nobody knows about.