IOC orders to muzzle athletes
Over at Metablocker Clemens Lerche is outraged about the fact that the International Olympic Committee prohibits athletes from keeping and updating online journals during the Olympic Games. The IOC went as far as sending out an 8-page letter to all participating athletes, informing about the consequences of "illegal online coverage". Berliner Zeitung quotes Dr. Stefan Volknant, spokesperson for the German National Olympic Committee:
Publishing texts on private homepages or in newspaper columns [during the Games] is a violation of the Olympic Charter. Whoever breaks these rules will be sent home.The IOC is expected to strictly enforce this rule and even hired private investigators to track the athletes' homepages.
The root of all evil:
Olympic Charter, Bye-law to Rule 59:
Under no circumstances, throughout the duration of the Olympic Games, may any athlete, coach, official, press attaché or any other accredited participant be accredited or act as a journalist or in any other media capacity.
See also: Athen 2004: NOK informiert über Verbot kommerzieller Aktiväten und Berichterstattung seitens Mitgliedern der Olympiamannschaft [in German]
Note: This regulation is nothing new. It has been in place for years. However it is strange that the IOC is so keen on enforcing it. What do they fear?
thanx for the coverage and the interessting link to sportrechturteile.de. didn`t know, that this site exists. what they fear: copyright violation
du hast den http://www.politik-digital.de/metablocker/ nicht verlinkt, sondern den artikel bei politik-digital.de, aber fast egal ;-)
The IOC fears the backlash of the media companies that have paid billions to report from the event. If you now can suddenly post from any mobile phone right on a blog that is accessible to millions of people.
Idea: Football reporting live from the even, blogged with mobile phones from people in the first lines. You never had so cheap sports reporting!
Well, I guess, they also fear postings like this one from Scott Goldblatt's Weblog:
The IOC technically owns the rights to the Olympics. This in turn means that they can sell advertising to the sponsors of their choosing. We as athletes see nothing from these revenues, and the IOC continually cashes in on our performances. We as athletes are unable to promote individual sponsors that we may have, which is why I promote them heavily on my website, and by word of mouth. Personally I do not particularly care for the restrictions we have. It impedes our ability as athletes to make a living, while enabling the IOC to throw around money in scandals left and right.
Yepp, i think it is only money that makes the ioc to strictly enforce such regulations. it is a billion dollar business and that is when things stop taking care of the olympic idea.... nothing new I know. but in light of the strict sponsor protection efforts of the ioc, this really sucks. check out this article: http://www.halifaxherald.com/stories/2004/08/08/f202.raw.html
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