International Olympics Committee Only Wants You to Share Content It Approves

By KRISTA L. COX

Social media corporations are being pressured to censor content, regardless of intellectual property rights.

IOC is notoriously aggressive when it comes to enforcing its intellectual property rights. Much of it has to do with protecting its name as well as its trademarked symbol of the five interlocking rings of blue, yellow, black, green, and red. IOC has brought suit against numerous organizations that have tried to use the name “Olympic” or the interlocking rings symbol. There’s even an international treaty, the Nairobi Treaty, obliging governments to protect the symbol.

During the last Olympics — summer of 2016 — IOC made headlines when it banned GIFs: “…the use of Olympic Material transformed into graphic animated formats such as animated GIFs (i.e., GIFV), GFY, WebM, or short video formats such as Vines and others, is expressly prohibited” in an attempt to limit and control the Olympic content that may be shared. Let’s be very clear, this is the IOC trying to censor speech and ensure that whatever videos are shared, they’re limited to whatever they approve.

Enter the assistance of social media platforms, doing the bidding of IOC. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) acknowledges that IOC “has put in place a series of measures to protect its own IP rights and those of rights-holding broadcasters, from online piracy . . . the IOC also uses advanced anti-piracy technology to prevent, track and take action against the upload of unauthorized Olympic content, in cooperation with major video-sharing websites and the relevant authorities in Games host countries.” What exactly does this mean?

Direct Link: https://abovethelaw.com/2018/02/international-olympics-committee-only-wants-you-to-share-content-it-approves/