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The United States Olympic Committee (USOC) must spend a majority of the four-year break between Olympics thinking up new, spectacularly petty demands to make of everyone when the next event rolls around. It's always been overbearing and thuggish, but it seems determined to top itself with each new iteration of its sports-related boondoggle.
In the run-up to this year's particularly dystopian Olympic games, being hosted in a city without clean water or a clean police force, the USOC has already demanded:
- That a company take down Olympic-related social media posts pertaining to the Olympic athlete the company is sponsoring
- That no non-official commercial entities are allowed to use certain hashtags in tweets
- That no "non-media" companies are allowed to refer to the Olympic games, outcomes of events, or even share/repost content posted by official Olympic media accounts
It's these last two that are being challenged -- not by a megacorporation unable to buy its way into the USOC's good graces, but a Minnesota-located franchise of the Zerorez carpet cleaning business.
A small business in Minnesota is suing over the US Olympic Committee's ban on tweeting about the Olympic games. The Committee announced last month that non-sponsors are banned from even using hashtags like #Rio2016 or #TeamUSA. Zerorez, a carpet cleaning business in Minnesota, will file suit in U.S. District Court on Thursday.
So why is this seemingly random floor cleaning business in Minnesota the one suing? They simply want to root for the home team.
"They're very engaged with social media," Aaron Hall, CEO of the JUX Law firm, told me over the phone. "They felt concerned about being censored on social media, especially at a time when we're going through a time of pain and negativity."
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Sunday August 07 2016, @04:33PM
Well, some think that just linking to web sites can be a crime. I don't know if the official site of the Olympics is https://www.olympic.org/ [olympic.org] or https://www.rio2016.com/ [rio2016.com] or something else.
What's with all this casual trampling upon our freedoms? Many freedoms are so ingrained that only fools would dare try to tell the public they shouldn't or don't have them, like that women can't have jobs, or that we can't criticize the President, Congress, and the entire government. Lese-majeste is dead and good riddance. But a whole bunch of other freedoms are under assault. Do we now have Lese-corporation? Why do corporations think they have the right to silence not just criticism but everything, why do they keep trying it? They really believe they lose money if someone else profits off something that so much as mentions their work. I'm thinking of an incident in which Ford tried to stop some calendar or club featuring the Ford Mustang. At the least, advertising restrictions have eased, before that advertisements were not allowed to name rivals.
Corporations should respect freedom of speech, but if they can't see that, if they're too unenlightened, uneducated, and plain barbaric to see it, they should at least fear the wrath of the people for expressing a desire to censor us. I'd like to see the Olympics savaged for this, make an example of them. How about throwing the individuals responsible for this official policy in jail for a few days?
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Sunday August 07 2016, @07:06PM
Its not just the hashtags.
A few years ago the USOC went after a lot of western Washington businesses on the Olympic Peninsula [dvorak.org] about the word Olympic in their name. I believe the Washington Attorney General shut them up with a threat and pointed out an exemption in US law.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by nethead on Monday August 08 2016, @02:47AM
You mean the Washington State AG that works in Olympia, WA?
How did my SN UID end up over 3 times my /. UID?