IP Justice › News Archive » IP Justice Comment on Request to ICANN from Red Cross & Olympic Committee to Ban Others’ Use of Words in Domain Names. RE: ICANN Public Comment Period RE: Red Cross & International Olympic Committee Request to Ban Others’ Use of Words in Domain Names That They Want for Themselves Today I write to express my personal disappointment with the way ICANN has mis-handled this request for special rights to prohibit the use of certain words in domain names which are desired by politically powerful, but ultimately arbitrary, interests. Unfortunately, this case represents another clear example of ICANN departing from its own established policies and stated principles of bottom-up governance to demonstrate that it is not quite ready to be a legitimate global governance institution that can be trusted to manage the security and stability of the domain name system in the public interest.
Nor has the community ever reached consensus to grant these special privileges, indeed many voices in the ICANN community continue to object to this attempt to steam-roll policy from the top-down to achieve political expedience. IP Justice › News Archive » IP Justice Comment on Olympic Committee and Red Cross Requests to be Granted Global Exclusive Licensing Rights to Words in the DNS. Online Freedom of Expression Under Threat at ICANN - Get Involved! IP Justice submitted a comment to ICANN’s public comment forum on the issue of initiating an ICANN Policy Development Process (PDP) to create special privileges to control the use of certain words in Internet domain names. The comment was filed in response to requests from the International Olympic Committee and Red Cross groups who have asked ICANN to grant them the exclusive right to use in domain names several hundred words that these groups claim are their "exclusive property". Despite their grossly exaggerated legal claims and overblown fears, these groups lobbied the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) at ICANN to put pressure upon the ICANN Board and GNSO Policy Council to create such unprecedented rights over the use of words in domain names.
IP Justice’s comment is filed in response to the preliminary issue report prepared by ICANN staff. The Cover Of This British Magazine About Olympic Censorship Could Be Banned From Sale Due To Olympic Censorship. Britain flooded with 'brand police' to protect sponsors - Home News - UK. Almost 300 enforcement officers will be seen across the country checking firms to ensure they are not staging "ambush marketing" or illegally associating themselves with the Games at the expense of official sponsors such as Adidas, McDonald's, Coca-Cola and BP.
The clampdown goes on while 3,500 soldiers on leave are brought in to bail out the security firm G4S which admitted it could not supply the numbers of security staff it had promised. Yesterday, the Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, refused to rule out that even more soldiers may be called upon to help with security, but dismissed the issue as merely a "hitch".
However, as well as the regular Army, the Olympic "brand army" will start its work with a vengeance today. Wearing purple caps and tops, the experts in trading and advertising working for the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) are heading the biggest brand protection operation staged in the UK. Some £1.4bn of the Games' £11.4bn budget comes from private sector sponsors. 1. 2. Olympic Cakes Breaching Copyright. No matter where you are in the world right now, it is easy to guess what the most talked about sporting event is. The Olympic Games. This presents a great opportunity for us cake decorators, since hot topics make for desirable cake designs. However, don’t go looking out your blue, black, red, yellow and green sugarpaste just yet. Something we’ve been made aware of is the copyright issue surrounding the use of the Olympic rings. Crazy, I know! Some people have been oblivious that they are breaching copyright issues over the matter, from bakeries displaying beautifully decorated cakes, to fruit stalls arranging their produce to look like the Olympic rings.
In an ideal world, we would be allowed to turn whatever we like into cakey masterpieces, but of course this is not the case. This isn’t all doom and gloom in our eyes though. Swimming goggles, boxing gloves and last but certainly not least the abundance of Olympian figures you could replicate. London 2012 Has WiFi Police to Shut Down WiFi Hotspots. It's a hotspot hunter! The International Olympic Committee recently revealed that mobile hotspots are not allowed at this year's Olympics. While you are permitted to use a your smartphone or tablet inside the venues, personal or private access points, along with 3G hubs and a ton of other items, are not allowed inside. Of course, when this news got around, many people wondered how the IOC planned to stop people from setting up their own WiFi hotspots. The answer is this guy: Twitter user Sadao Turner posted the picture above along with the caption, "Something you won't see on TV, this is the Olympics WiFi Police.
We emailed the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games about the picture and they in turn directed us to the UK telecoms watchdog Ofcom, which is looking after the WiFi at the Games. The ban on WiFi hotspots likely has to do with efforts to keep interference and overloaded networks to a minimum. Image Credit: @SadaoTurner. What?!? Now we’re not even allowed to link to the Olympics website? Digital We’ve heard a lot about how the Olympics Games will take over London in the past few weeks: missile launchers on rooftops, non-approved chips banned from the Olympic site, protest threatened, Twitter accounts censored. But we must admit we hadn’t noticed the Olympic organisers attempts to change the way the entire internet works. Our attention has been drawn to the terms of use of the London 2012 website, which make it very clear under what circumstances you’re allowed link to the site: Links to the Site.
Got that? This obviously presents a problem. So I’m not going to say that. Here’s the link to the eminently sensible Terms of Use Padraig Reidy is News Editor at Index on Censorship More London 2012. Olympic Broadcast Restrictions Lead to Newscaster's Lego Reenactment (Video) Each Olympics, trademark attorneys everywhere compete with each other over who can best explain the International Olympic Committee's tough regimen in cracking down on brand ambushers. By now, most people are familiar just how protective the IOC can be of its marks and official sponsors.
Much less attention gets paid to the IOC's restrictive news access rules. For example, the IOC has these guidelines for newscasters who wish to show footage from the London games: "a) Olympic Material may appear in no more than three (3) News Programs per day; and b) No more than two (2) minutes of Olympic Material may be used in any one News Program; and c) These News Programs must be separated by a period of at least three (3) hours; and d) No more than one third of any individual event may be used in any one News Programs or 30 seconds, whichever is the lesser time.
However, if the duration of an individual Olympic event is less than 15 seconds the whole of the event can be shown in a News Program. " MattEPower : International Olympic Committee... Even The Sex At The Olympics Is Sponsored. We've had plenty of stories about the insane lengths the Olympics goes to in order to block out any appearance of a non-sponsor brand, including taping over the brands of non-sponsors on bathroom fixtures and urinals.
And, apparently, the Olympics obsession with deleting all non-sponsorship brands extends almost to the point of contact when athletes decide to get down and dirty with each other. Every couple years, when the Olympics roll around, there are stories like this one, about the volume of sexual activity in the Olympic Village among the athletes. And, if we go by condom count, the volume keeps on growing: At the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, the Australian organizing committee distributed 45,000 free condoms in the village. Eight years later in Beijing, 70,000 condoms—labeled with the phrase ‘Faster, Higher, Stronger’—were exhausted and 20,000 more were ordered. London 2012 Olympics: Copyright laws ban bakers from icing cakes with logo. By Martin Robinson Updated: 21:38 GMT, 14 September 2011 When they began planning their international show for next year, Britain's leading cake decorators thought one theme was obvious - the Olympics.
But their plan to celebrate the 2012 games in icing and marzipan has been left in tatters after the International Olympic Committee banned them from copying any of its official symbols, including the five rings. The British Sugarcraft Guild, which is organising the competition, has been told it could face court proceedings leading to an injunction or substantial compensation if anyone ignores the copyright warning. Upset: Cake decorator Avril Unwin is one of 1,000 who have been told she is not allowed to use any Olympic logos on her cakes due to copyright After months of careful planning, the guild must now find an alternative theme for the 7th International Sugarcraft Exhibition, to be held in Telford, Shropshire, next May.
She said: ‘There is no commercial gain whatsoever from this. YouTube et Dailymotion privés de Jeux Olympiques. Envie de voir ou de revoir le combat de boxe du Français Alexis Vastine, dont on dit la victoire volée au bénéfice de l'Ukrainien Taras Shelestiuk (qui affrontera en demi-finale un boxeur britannique à la victoire elle-même contestée) ? N'espérez pas la trouver sur YouTube, pas même sur la chaîne officielle des Jeux Olympiques qui choisit ses rediffusions (et quand elles sont disponibles, l'embed est interdit). Mise sous pression par le Comité International Olympique (CIO), la filiale de Google exerce un contrôle très étroit sur les vidéos publiées par les internautes, et supprime automatiquement toute diffusion des épreuves des JO. Même les extraits de quelques secondes sont purgés.
Sachant que YouTube reçoit chaque minute plus de 72 heures de vidéo, on mesure l'exploit. Idem pour regarder la course d'Usain Bolt, impossible à voir sur YouTube dans une qualité normale. Il faut ruser pour laisser une vidéo filtrer : Sur la plateforme française Dailymotion, le constat est le même. Les JO de Londres ou le déni de la liberté de communiquer. Il n'y a aucun évènement sportif au monde qui suscite une telle paranoïa des organisateurs dans la protection des droits de propriété intellectuelle. Le Guardian a publié une enquête sur la manière dont le Comité d'organisation des Jeux Olympiques de Londres 2012 (LOCOG) entend défendre dans les moindres détails les exclusivités sur ses propres droits ou ceux de ses partenaires, jusqu'à se rendre dans chaque WC pour supprimer la marque d'un savon ou d'un papier-toilettes qui ne serait pas sponsor officiel des JO. Le législateur britannique a même adopté en 2006 une loi, le London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act, qui complète une loi de 1995 pour étendre encore davantage la protection des droits de propriété intellectuelle liés à l'évènement, et créer des sanctions pénales spécifiques.
Mais le Guardian note aussi que cette année, les réseaux sociaux seront sous haute surveillance. Les spectateurs aussi sont concernés. US Olympic Committee Forces 30 Year Old Philidelphia Gyro Restaraunt To Change Its Name. Ah, the Olympics. The spirit of cooperation. Of athletic competition. Of the essence of global feel-good-ness, where all the Olympic committees of the world come together to put on a spectacle made of the most brilliant athletes in the world. Oh, and they also like to stifle links to critical pieces (do we have your attention, boys?) , by banning their fans from sharing their experiences via social media, and threatening ICANN for refusing to block Olympic-related terms. And, now, Steve M shares a story from the Philadelphia Daily News about how the United States Olympic Committee has won a 30 year battle they didn't know they were fighting with a gyro shop. "Three decades after it burst from the starting block, the Greek eatery Olympic Gyro has received a cease-and-desist email from the USOC, the nonprofit corporation responsible for training and funding U.S. teams.
"The USOC communications department declined to discuss the matter with the Daily News. Yes, you read that correctly. Anger as events fall foul of Olympics copyright - Management. Tough sponsorship rules banning use of the ‘O’-word under fire as individuals and firms are warned off, reports Claire Smith ORGANISERS of the Hopetoun House Horse Trials thought they were on to a winner when they realised this year’s event on 28 and 29 July corresponded with the Olympic opening weekend.
A live link-up with the London Games will ensure visitors can keep up with what is happening down south while enjoying live equestrian and rural events in the heart of the Scottish countryside. However, organisers have now been told they will not be allowed to mention the “O” word in their advertising – making them the latest to fall victims of the Olympic copyright police. Camille Craig, Hopetoun’s marketing manager, said: “We have been extremely cautious when using the “O” word simply to avoid any risk of contravening guidelines.
Martin Hunt, of Tartan Silk public relations, said the heavy- handed approach was a PR disaster: “This is a complete piece of nonsense. JO : Twitter et NBC, partenaires de censure. Pour parler des jeux olympiques (pardon, des Jeux d'été), les journalistes marchent décidemment sur des oeufs. Après le CIO, c'est Twitter qui se montre tatillon. Un correspondant britannique a ainsi vu son compte twitter temporairement suspendu pour avoir critiqué trop fortement la chaîne américaine NBC, partenaire du réseau social à l'occasion des JO. Guy Adams, correspondant du journal britannique The Independant, s'est montré particulièrement virulent sur Twitter, allant jusqu'à publier l'adresse mail professionnelle du président de NBC Olympics, Gary Zenker.
"Ecrivez-lui ce que vous en pensez ! ", disait le tweet. Sa suspension fait en outre suite à une requête de NBC. Une analyste des médias numériques, Rebecca Lieb, considère quant à elle que Twitter "crée un précédent dangereux" et "pourrait subir des dommages irréparables s'il montrait que les intérêts d'un partenaire commercial prévalent sur sa politique et ses utilisateurs". De son côté, Guy Adams s'amuse de l'épilogue : "Oh. Kate Middleton Parents' Family Business Party Pieces 'Did not Breach' Olympics Ad Rules - International Business Times UK. Party Pieces' ring toss game The accessories business run by the parents of Kate and Pippa Middleton has been cleared of breaching advertising rules around the Olympics games.
Lawyers representing games organiser Locog investigated the Middletons' Party Pieces website after being alerted by journalists over a range entitled "Celebrating the Games". The range includes products such as 2012 novelty glasses, a ring toss game bearing the colours of the Olympic rings, and plates bearing the legend "I Love London". Locog, working in tandem with the Olympics Delivery Authority (ODA), has threatened to impose £20,000 fines on retailers found to be using key words and phrases reserved by official Olympics sponsors. Locog's lawyers concluded that Party Pieces had not used any of the words on Locog's banned list, which includes "gold", "silver" and "bronze".
There was no comment from the Duchess of Cambridge or the royal family. Proposal to Protect International Red Cross and International Olympic Committee Names at the Top Level in New gTLDs. Calendar 2012 | Generic Names Supporting Organization. IGP Blog. Email Archives: [gnso-iocrc-dt] The Concept of International Legal Personality, An Inquiry into the History and Theory of International Law.
Motions 12 April 2012. Preliminary Report | Meeting of the New gTLD Program Committee. Olympic domain watch list shows hundreds of squats, legit names too. In The Spirit Of Fair Play: A Primer On IP And The Olympics. Olympic Madness.