The secret Olympics?
In a remarkable – if not bizarre – twist to the Olympic Story, Amateur Photographer reports that it will be against Olympic rules to tweet, share on Facebook or in any way share your photos of the event.
Quite how this will be policed is beyond comprehension and one would hope police officers are not going to be expected to pursue anyone seen posting photos on Instagram.
The London 2012 conditions state: ‘Images, video and sound recordings of the Games taken by a Ticket Holder cannot be used for any purpose other than for private and domestic purposes and a Ticket Holder may not license, broadcast or publish video and/or sound recordings, including on social networking websites and the internet more generally, and may not exploit images, video and/or sound recordings for commercial purposes under any circumstances, whether on the internet or otherwise, or make them available to third parties for commercial purposes.’
Coming after moves to restrict public demonstrations, photographers being interrogated on public footpaths and concern around heavy-handed commercial restrictions on what logos you can wear inside the Olympic village, this is yet another worrying development.
Rather than being the celebration organisers promised, London 2012 is rapidly risking becoming one of the most intimidating and restrictive events seen for decades. We’ll be writing to the Organising Committee and the Secretary of State to ask for confirmation that no action will be taken against someone simply sharing photos of the events they attend on social media.
Perhaps it’s all a secret marketing ploy to boost sales of nigheen eighty four. It was set in London, after all.
10 Comments
TrulyMadly
27th April 2012The Olympics are a PUBLIC
event, a display of talent that is meant to be lauded and shared, if I’m
not mistaken. How can anyone impose secrecy on it lawfully? If Alton
Towers imposed such a ban, people would stop attending. Surely we have
the right to take snapshots of our experiences at any sporting event and
share them as we like. This has got my gander up!
Anonymous
27th April 2012It’s probably one of those laws the police think actually exist when they don’t
Look at the You’re not allowed to photograph the police in public” scandal as an example of what little the police actually know about the law!
Yes, the lawyers actually say the police cannot arrest you for doing that! well they can, but the courts would laugh at the CPO as his case gets booted out of court faster than a speeding bullet.
Radio Nowhere » Blog Archive » The secret olympics
27th April 2012[…] copied from Big Brother Watch: In a remarkable – if not bizarre – twist to the Olympic Story, Amateur Photographer reports […]
Anonymous
27th April 2012I would honestly love to see them try
to enforce this; the Met can barely tackling cyber stalkers, online bullying and harassment etc.
billybloggs
27th April 2012I think it is not so much the Met, this time as the Olympic organisers claiming copyright of any picture taken by the world and it’s dog, of any Olympic event, a reinvention of the ” All Your base belong To Us ” , or the Hortmail, all your data, and patents or anything you send via snotmail is belong to Microsoft mindset.
If someone too a photo from a TV at home, or culled a still from the broadcast, so hadn’t bought a ticket and posted it up on twatter, wonder what they would/could do.
Michael Roberts FRAS
27th April 2012Hahaha, try and enforce this you jumped up bunch of paper shufflers!
billybloggs
28th April 2012Do these nomarks not realise that many people can’t give a stuff about their wet dream Olympics, and will be doing other useful things, a nice walk on the seafront, watch a Blu-ray, anything but the Olympics?
All Set for the London 1984 Olympics…Spectators to be banned from posting their own photos on Facebook « Melon Farmers Blog
28th April 2012[…] article from […]
Aghast
5th May 2012I would like to tell you that a choir I sing with has had to alter the lyrics of an Olympic anthem they have recentlyrecorded because it contained the word “Olympic”. Is it really the case that the London 2012 organisation “owns” a word? The word “Olympic” or “the Olympics” dates from ancient Greece!!! If anybody can be said to “own” the word it is Greece, surely? In any case, it is utterly ludicrous that a song can’t contain this word but we have had to remove it in any case!
Danny Felix
11th June 2012When I was 13, I made a website about the London Olympics for a school ICT project. After 6 months, I received a large envelope of legal documents from LOCOG. They had gone to considerable effort to get my address as this is not listed on the WHOIS for my domain. I was to remove the site immediately, or there would be big consequences. One problem they had was that one of my URLs contained the term ‘londonolympics’, which is not allowed to be reproduced in public. This was a 40 page document. It was at this point I knew that the Olympics would suck.