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The Web And The Olympics 157

Posted by michael from the olympic-sized-headache dept.
Anonymous Coward writes: "Here is a nice article about how the IOC (International Olympic Committee) is banning the Internet from the Sydney Games. Here is the link: http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/08/15/olympic.ban.idg/index.html". This story came from the Industry Standard, but since on their site it's an unfriendly multi-page format, we'll link to CNN. Are the Olympics nothing more than eyeballs to be sold to the highest bidder? Very thoughtful article. (A mostly-unrelated aside: Don't use the e-mail kiosks at the 2002 Olympics.)
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The Web and the Olympics More

The Web and the Olympics

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  • What if I don't give a rats ass about diving, track 'n' field, gymnastics, figure skating and weight lifting? In past years I've been pretty much out in the cold. If we had more than one delivery channel I could turn NBC off and turn the martial arts or fencing coverage on. Plus whatever else they do that I've never even heard of.
    --
  • OK, so they're kiosks and whatnot. That's a bummer, because they're likely not to allow floppy disk access or installation. But people can still use web-based (semi)secure email like hushmail (I think the password is sent over SSL, so it might only be good for one-offs...

    Of course, the kiosks might have java disabled...

    But seriously, this is weak. There is a need for safety, but what stupid ass nutcase is going to email people about their terrorist act from the location? Are they seriously thinking that they'll intercept some message alerting them to someone placing a bomb somewhere?

    Now that the monitoring is becoming public knowledge, is there any chance that they won't be jammed with prank messages ("I saw a guy leaving an unmarked duffel bag under the bleachers! I hope it's not a BOMB!", or, "Dear Osamu, I left your package where you asked, hope your friend finds it!")

    If they are really expecting reliable results, I want some of what they;re smoking. But really, I want to know what's really going on. Test-run of a new carnivore product?
  • Unfortunately what with the attitude of most /.ers that everything should be "free" and online

    this has little to do with free. it has alot to do with online.

    when ESPN can't show Olympic event re-plays on their website, then we're talking about a restriction placed upon a HUGE business - ESPN is no mom/pop operation.

    but even more, the real problem is that the IOC is out of touch, out of the loop, and quite possibly too old to understand the internet, the people who use it, and why it is important.

    stop me if i am wrong here, but since i work monday-friday (saturday?!) about 7AM-5PM CST, i assume that i am going to miss some events. of course, i have web access at work and i am fortunate enough to work for a company that allows me the freedom to work and surf as i please. so by excluding the web as a viable medium - they are excluding me from viewing some things i might care about (cycling events!)

  • But people can still use web-based (semi)secure email like hushmail (I think the password is sent over SSL, so it might only be good for one-offs...

    The problem with this is that they're not just controlling the network, but the computers, too. If they have the resources to intercept every email and determine how they want it routed, they certainly have the resources to put at least a keystroke logger on each of the kiosk computers. Given the circumstances, I wouldn't trust those computers with my Slashdot password, let alone the password for an email account.


    --Phil (A friend used to tell me, "There are two types of paranoia: total and insufficient.")
  • I am hoping that some of the other countries that do have licensing do broadcast events on the internet. I for one am way tired of seeing the same people in the same events. Even if they put up the "weird" events I will be happy. I would like to see some fencing, or karate or anything that I haven't seen in years past. Those people are the real Olympians to me now. These are the people that aren't just riding a huge McDonalds/Home Depot sponsorship and still manage to get to the games. I don't care what language the commentary is in, just show me something different!

    Normally I try to watch whatever Canadian channel has rights because their coverage is much better. You don't get too much of the "weird" events but you do see people from other countries winning even when they are competing against Canadians.
    I remember every opening ceremonies getting down right pissed at the NBC coverage. You could hear other countries being announced and coming in but they would cut to some American athlete who looks pretty bored to be there while in the background you can see athletes from other countries jumping up and down, crying, and totally being stoked how happy they are to be there.

    Maybe I will have to join some hacking crew so I can get some good feeds from the games.
  • The Olympics seems no different to me than Coca Cola or Tommy Hilfiger: it's a brand that sells youth and a lifestyle to consumers. They are a hugely profitable international commercial enterprise with questionable accounting and financial practices.

    Are you going to get all pushed out of shape about Coca Cola commercials not being broadcast on the web? So why worry about what happens with the Olympics? Do you really care whether one doped athlete beats another one by 1/100's of a second?

    You don't need an expensive, canned media extravaganza to aspire to the "olympic ideals". Participate in sports yourself, travel, learn languages, and get to know people. You'll be healthier and do more for the world than the "official" Olympics ever did.

  • www.inthecrease.com [inthecrease.com]

    www.sportsjones.com [sportsjones.com]

    Just two examples of legitamate, well-run sports journalism sites. Sadly, your ignorance on this subject is all too common amongst PR departments and SID's. Hopefully, this task force [sportseditor.com] will help correct that problem.

  • What is the legal ground for preventing this? Are they expecting to put a fair-use agreement on the back of every ticket? What is Australian law on freedom of the press?
    Uh, have you looked at the back of a ticket recently? Ticketbastard ticket stock, for instance, has the following statement printed on the back (among other things):
    Holder agrees by use of this ticket, not to transmit or aid in transmitting any description, account, picture, or reproduction of th egame, performance, exhibition, or event ("event) to which this ticket is issued.
    Now, I cannot comment on Austrailian contract law, but here in the 'states the courts have ruled that the fine print on the back of a ticket is a valid contract. If you don't agree to the conditions on the ticket then you are entitled to a refund.

    Burris

  • The amateur status issue just turns the Olympics into a joke.

    In a country like America, where professional sports are a big business, alomst all of the best athletes at any particular sport are going to try and make money off of their sport. It would be stupid for them not to. They've spent tons of time and money and effort getting to be great at their sport, just like some people spend time and effort to become great at computer programming.

    So now the Olympics ask us to send out best athletes. Wait, no, don't send your BEST athletes, because they're professionals. We really meant send the best who aren't good enough to get paid for it.

    Now I know that there are athletes who may be the best in the world at what they do, and still amateurs. Maybe they do something that isn't popular enough to make a living at it.

    But of course the NBA Dreamteam is going to show up, they're the best basketball players we have. So if you have a competition for best basketball team in the world, it's moronic not to let our best players show up.
  • With the continuing addition of new sports to the Olympics, I think that they may find themselves with an overly diluted brand-name.

    These sports tend to be ever-smaller niche sports (MTB bike races, curling, white-water rafting etc.) Will more and more "I won the gold in underwater basket weaving!" bring down the overall "greatness" of the Olympics in the eyes of the masses? Or does the inclusion of a broader selection of sports improve the games overall?

    (for the record, I like MTB biking and WW-rafting; I just don't think they should be Olympic sports)
  • the only thing they don't get paid for is the actual competition, and this is only a small portion of the money a pro athlete makes. Just ask Tiger Woods.

    Or Miss Kournikova, who is going to be making the majority of her money from marketing, because she sure ain't gonna win a grand slam any time soon :)

  • What's all this about MSNBC and wondering about their coverage and Internet support... I thought IBM [ibm.com] was doing it [ibm.com].
  • This is related, because only drugged athlete's break other drugged athlete's records.
    Yeah, right. So every sprinter who's run faster than Ben Johnson is cheating? Excuse me, I think Maurice Greene's lawyers want a word...

  • Who in the Internet industry faces the journalistic standards of accountability and credibility?

    From the website you link to... the answer:

    Nobody!

    Until they do, online news will continue to suck. I'm sure you mean well, but if wishes were fishes...

    ---
    Jon E. Erikson

  • Since the Big Television companies are paying x(milion) amount of dollars to the IOC for the rights to broadcast, why would the IOC then turn around and give other media free coverage.

    The IOC is not a commision as much as it is a company trying to make the most money. They think cause I love my country Im going to bend over backwards just to see us beat the US (Im Canadian) in the 100 metre dash again their right, and their going to suck every bit of cash in my pockets and Credit Card (whose the credit card sponsor this year). One only needs to look at what it takes for a city to actually 'get' the Olympics. Back room bargaining and incentives for the representatives. Do you think youll be able to buy a Pepsi at the Olympics? No, because Coke has the rights as an official sponsor to exist as the only soft drink company represented. The IOC no longer cares about sports as much as it does the money.

    The IOC exploits nationalism, the same as Microsoft exploits the ignorance of its customer base. In my opinion people will be very pissed that they have to wait x amount of hours to see a report on a specific event. The IOC is stupid for not exploiting the market that the internet offers. My guess is their a bunch of Win9x users who couldnt get their email client to work, so they said fuxx it, we'll stick with TV.

  • Are you kidding me? Are you and the IOC people aware of the shameful way the NBC is going to broadcast the Games? Aren't the IOC people aware that the popularity of the games is correlated with the way it is shown and that you can't just ignore the new media? At least on the web I would have a chance to skip the stupidity and fast-forward straight to content. As it is, NBC is going to broadcast hundreds of hours of programming and not a single one live. Not to mention content: in the US for every minute of event coverage there are four minutes of stupid athlete biographies and the like.
  • This is par for the course. As an athlete, I have three peers who went to the 96 Olympics and said the drug testing outside of USOC was a total farce ( Including a growth hormone (hGH) detection machine being shutdown after the first two days of testing ).
    This is related, because only drugged athlete's break other drugged athlete's records.
    I dont think the IOC has any Olympic spirit left.
    The almighty buck...
  • What about the new sports that women are breaking into, like pole vaulting and sumo wrestling?

    (OK, I made the part about sumo up, but now I've got a vision in my head that's making me think twice about eating lunch today)
  • Yes and they could make more money if they licened some internet sites to officially cover the olympics. All that will happen now is a few sites will buy tickets to events themselves, and get content that way.

    And people will like it, and want it. Why should I have to wait till prime time the next night to see some event, when I'm up late the previous night when its happening live.

    At least in Canada the CBC has said they will broadcast at night, but NBC is not.
  • NBC is covering the olympics and will be posting results, et. al. on the internet.

    According to the article they will only be posting results after it has had a chance to be aired on the network, possibly a day or more after the event takes place (after all, who in their right mind would actually watch an event if they already know the result? </sarcasm>). For a medium that has always meant instant information, this is pretty disappointing, to say the least.

  • Regarding the Cringley article. (Score:3)

    by Th3 D0t ( 204045 ) on Thursday August 17, 2000 @05:20AM (#849224)
    After the last article of his linked to from slashdot, where he explained his laughable theory that the purpose of carnivore was to "shut down the Internet," I wasn't expecting much from his this time. The first 3/4 of the article talked about S.W.A.T. teams, and how police don't need them, even though they are primarily used for apprehending suspects that they think may turn violent, and not blowing stuff up, as Cringley seems to think. Yeah, the S.W.A.T. team really helped take down those two Columbine killers! Fucking cowards. Anyways, in the final paragraph, he then "[blows] the lid off" a secret plan to steal the "passwords" (?) of the "business elite" via web kiosks at the Olympics. This guy is either nuts, or dumb.
    ---
  • Which is why I loved watching (for the first 15 minutes) Australia thumping the Dream Team... I think the scroe was 14-4 at one stage. Then reality set in. ;)
  • If you can get CBC, they aren't delaying their Olympic TV coverage. They're doing something like, oh, 15 hours live per day? And I've found their coverage much better - far less time on those tedious, soft-focus, time-sucking, flag-in-the-background athlete biographies that NBC seems enamored with. And they actually are willing to show events in which US or Canadian athletes are not in medal contention for. And they at least try to find commentators with a clue about the sports in question (John Tesh commmentating gymnastics? WTF?)

    No idea how this affects any web coverage on their part though... But who needs transpacific cell phone calls if your satellite dish will do?

  • Fsck the IOC.

    As far as the broadcasting over the net....
    Anyone got about $100,000 to piss off the IOC? Thats what it would take to put a good camera in a helicopter for a few events and get the data to a to a well connected streaming server. Of course the banner ads would quickly make up for that. Most of the Olympic park in Sydney would be a radio mess but with good antennas in the right places, wireless ethernet will work. The real problem is that once security knows whats going on, you loose the camera, equipment and other tickets but thouse problems can be solved with enough $$.

    Any takers :-)

  • That infrastructure is in place to bring MORE MONEY and not to make athlete's life easier.

    And? This money is for the event itself, not for the competitors! It goes towards paying for the huge costs involved in running an event of that size. As I said earlier, how else are they going to finance it?

    I don't care. Why do they need the money in the first place?

    Your lack of understanding of even rudimentary economics is truly astounding.

    Maybe if the Olimpics will be in where child porn is legal would that be OK for you that they will advertise child porn during the show in order to make money for the infrastructure?

    What are you talking about? What has child porn got to do with the Olympics? Obviously, not being paedophiles they're not going to be sponsered by a child porn ring are they?

    ---
    Jon E. Erikson

  • I understood that between NBC, CNBC, and MSNBC, all of the Olympics was going to be covered...some 400+ hours of action. The odd thing, according to Sports Illustrated some weeks ago, is that precisely 0 hours of it will be broadcasted live. I know Oz is a long way away, but you would think that they could be bothered to show at least a couple of things live...

  • Can't the EFF have people go down there with laptops and cellphones and set up their own kiosks? If not on the actual grounds suffeciently away from them so that the law can't come down on them and snatch them away.
  • ... to run the olympics. They are only banning the internet in relation to internet-only reporters and such.

    NBC is covering the olympics and will be posting results, et. al. on the internet.
  • Yes, thats correct.
    It's okay to be niave, but when someone who is "on the inside" tells you different, you should listen. Two of my best friends ( fellow gym rats ) served time for disto of performance substances. Their customer list was a who's who of college sports.
    Oh,Case in point... Carl Lewis was terrible, except after he could drug up for the Olympics.
    Hang out with a few athletes and shut the fuck up.

  • Re:Not Watching Much Anyway (Score:3)

    by Rand Race ( 110288 ) on Thursday August 17, 2000 @06:20AM (#849233) Homepage
    "Cuz I like to see the events, not the two dozen "Life Stories" that take up 90% of the broadcast time."

    That is my second biggest gripe with NBC's so-called coverage, and it fits right into my biggest gripe. Why don't they ditch the 'she boldly overcame acne to become america's favorite scantily clad pre-pubescent gymnast!' crap and show some sports other than Gymnastics (female for the most part), Basketball (Don't tell me who's gonna win, just gimee the spread), and the shorter Field & Track and Swimming events. As a fan of Soccer and Fencing I have been hoping against hope that I might be able to find some coverage of these events online (soccer? yea right, no time for commercials or human interest), but once again my hopes are dashed in favor of the publics slightly disturbing fixations on jailbait gymnasts and lopsided basketball victories.

    Fuck NBC, Fuck the IOC, and fuck the Olympics in general.

  • Of course. The inhabitants of the country sponsoring an Olympic team/athlete would be issued a a 16-bit decryption key with a Caesar cipher(hey we've got to use modern security techniques) to access our web content.

    Then we wait...

    When somebody finally comes up with a crack for our regional encoding scheme and publishes it, we'll put them on trial. We'll scream about lost fortunes due to this person ruining our great protection scheme. We'll shut down websites left and right who publish ANY information about this breach. Hell we'll shutdown CNN if they even publish an article regarding the trial(s) and what not. We'll shutdown Slashdot.

    We'll use all those Olympic sponsor dollars (and the small fortune made from advertising off of our new Olympic site) to tie site operators and the ENTIRE WORLD up in legal cases. All because we don't want some hacker in the Netherlands to see that their team kicked the crap out of the US in some event.

    Good idea, I'm glad you thought of it....

    Long live the American dream, market, pay somebody off, and SUE, SUE, SUE.

  • Sure, I agree that they need money, but what's that money for? It's for give the world the Games.. and as it is, with NBC's coverage no one in the US is getting to see more than, like, 5 minutes of the games every day!

    (Actually, I've seen an article during the 98 Olympics that said NBC showed sports only 10-20% of the time.)

    I mean, if I got rich and gave them a trillion dollars, in exchange for exclusive rights, and decide not to show the games at all, would they accept my money?

  • When you replace "amateur" with "independently wealthy," it doesn't seem so bad, does it? See what the Olympic idealists did to Jim Thorpe if you still have any illusions about the purity of "amateur" sports.

    The Olympic "ideal" is just a weak attempt to legitimize the aristocracy. Bring in the pros!

    --

  • From the article:Money and tradition, more than anything else, explain why you'll have to turn to the boob tube for your Olympic thrills.

    Tradition? You mean the ancient Greeks could only watch the Olympic games on the tube?

  • hang on to your hats, folks... heavy concept coming through... run commercials on the web, too!

    honestly. where is the brainiac executive who said "we'll lose all our advertising revenue if we broadcast over the web"? and more important, how could the rest have believed him?

    I dislike ads on the web as much as you do, but I'd be ok with wading through a few to get to coverage of the sports I'm interested in. Nobody's forcing me to retain it any more than a TV commercial.

  • It's not just real-time streaming that's being banned, but also media credentials for on-line sports journalists. Oh, and there's no radio play-by-play, either. Nobody is saying that the IOC shouldn't sell the real-time video rights (TV) to the highest bidder. But to exclude on-line media outlets altogether, and restrict radio (what the hell is up with that?) only serves to restrict unnecessarily the public's participation in what can be a wonderful event.
  • the Olympics rests upon a huge infrastructure, and this, unsuprisingly enough, costs a lot of money. How else are they going to obtain this money without licensing and sponsership deals with major corporations? Selling drugs? Running arms?

    How about kickbacks and under-the-table deals, the way they've been doing it for the past few decades?

    There was something I had read a few years ago that said that in order for the Olympics to be held in some city (forget which, or when), a member of the IOC board's kid had to get into stanford.

    The IOC is one of the most dishonorable organizations I have ever heard of. I don't know if this is because most under-the-table deals are less public or what. But what costs so much money to the IOC anyway? The city in which the event is held picks up most of the tab, all the IOC does is rake in the advertising dough. Oh, and get kickbacks.

    And everybody knows that the olympics is not "the greatest sporting event in the world," the Yankees vs. Mets world series is.

    And you really think the olympics "brings the world together"? How can something that is, by definition, a competition between nations be a unifying force? If the U.S. kicks every country's ass in Soccer, do you think relations with other countries (some of which have killed losing goalies) will improve or worsen?

    I hate the IOC. And, for that matter, the olympics. Pirate away.

    __________________________________________________ ___

  • Old habits die hard... I hit the 'Anonymous' button without thinking about it.
  • This probably isn't about not showing this in the internet. This is about protecting the rights of the media that invested all those billions of dollars to get 'first coverage' of the events. When using internet, almost anything TV coverage can offer has just become completely worthless.

    I mean, why should I want to watch to when I can watch exactly what I want to see right here on the net?


    Hans Voss
    ---
  • If the IOC is to continue the claim that the Olympics is an amateur event, then it has no right to claim that the money is theirs, or protest that the cost of the event precludes online viewing.

    Let's get real, here. If the "amateur" athletes were there for the love of the sport, they wouldn't NEED multi-billion dollar contracts for wearing some brand-name clothes.

    If the Olympics is to have it's REAL meaning of being an OPEN celebration of amateur athletics, then SHOVE the banner adverts, the promotions, the "unofficial" prizes, etc.

    On the other hand, if the money is what's important, then STOP PRETENDING and only show it on the home shopping channels.

    The recent corruption scandal is no surprise. The Olympics became corrupt the moment that people focussed on the cash. TRUE amateurs (such as Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards) have been excluded by deliberately tailored "requirements".

    IMHO, the IOC and the Olympics as they currently are, have long outlived their usefulness. Scrap them, and build something that REALLY honors the spirit of the Greek Olympiads.

  • but even more, the real problem is that the IOC is out of touch, out of the loop, and quite possibly too old to understand the internet, the people who use it, and why it is important.

    And what are you basing this on? And forgive me for saying this, but why is the internet just so important?

    ---
    Jon E. Erikson

  • Compound [the Net blackout] with the fact that there's no live TV, and it's the same as if the network that had the rights to the Super Bowl said, 'The Super Bowl won't be available on live TV or the Internet this year.' Then you sit there and say, 'Wait a minute. Aren't I entitled to this?'"

    Are we entitled to watch sports? I don't think so. We can demand to see it in the medium we prefer, and the only real weapon we have is the potential loss of revenue (real or percieved) if not provided in the way we want it.

  • As I recall... (Score:4)

    by G-Man ( 79561 ) on Thursday August 17, 2000 @06:45AM (#849246)
    ...the whole 'amateur' thing was concocted up for the modern Olympics to ensure only wealthy folks could participate. A steel worker in Sheffield in the 1890s couldn't afford to seriously train for a sport and *not* get paid for it, while the Duke of Somewhereshire had plenty of leisure time on his hands. Winners in the ancient Olympic games received great material rewards, not just a medal and a laurel wreath.

    Really, the whole 'amateur' thing has been a farce for a long time. How exactly were Soviet athletes amateurs? In my book, if you don't have a full-time, non-sports related job, and all you do is train, and someone takes care of your food and housing, then your *job* is being an athlete and you are a professional. (You may be underpaid, but that is another issue.) I doubt many of the Red Army hockey players spent time walking point in Afghanistan.

    Lest anyone think I'm just digging on the Soviets, it's hardly better here. Carl Lewis or Michael Johnson don't go off to day jobs after their training sessions. Odds are that a track star went to college on a scholarship and hasn't seen a regular job since. Athletes get paid for appearances, for sponsorships, etc. -- the only thing they don't get paid for is the actual competition, and this is only a small portion of the money a pro athlete makes. Just ask Tiger Woods.

    Save for Team Handball and Curling, there really aren't any true amateurs in the Olympics anymore, and there haven't been for a long time.

  • Chlorine == Bleach. (Score:3)

    by SvnLyrBrto ( 62138 ) on Thursday August 17, 2000 @06:46AM (#849247)
    >Take two common things you probably have in your
    >laundry room - bleach and chlorine. Everyone >knows what mixing those does.

    Uh.... yeah. It gets your whites whiter. And mabye you use it in your swimming pool too.

    I think you meant to say *ammonia* and chlorine, which, when mixed together in strong enough concentrations, form a gaseous poison remarkably similar to WWI mustard gas.

    john
    Resistance is NOT futile!!!

    Haiku:
    I am not a drone.
    Remove the collective if

  • I agree with you completely. I have, on a whole, stopped watching the Olympics since they never show my country's team. Even when a non-American wins a medal, they don't even have him/her on-screen long enough to play the national anthem. It's really dissappointing.

    I'd gladly watch some ads online if they'd just show us what we want.

    Go Aussies!
  • >the success of individuals in a country reflects the strength of that country as a whole

    Yes! Especially contradictory when an athlete representing a given country is not a native of that country. There was a case a while back where some US-born of 3rd or 4th generation immigrant family, who was maybe only 1/4 of the relevant ethnicity, moved back to his 'homeland' to represent that country.

    So he didn't qualify for the US Olympic team so he made a deal to train and be on the itsy-bitsy-sylvania team. Except he didn't permanently relocate there. He went to train for a few months and after the Olympics, he returned to his life as a US citizen. Boy was he proud of his national heritage!

    (wish I could remember enough of the particulars to find a link to this.)

    But then, remember that a lot of these countries suffer from poor self-image and Olymic glory is about the only source of national pride in some cases. The whole USA!-USA!-USA! coverage by the networks is pretty sad, and does run contrary to the supposed 'spirit of the games' BS.

    "Let's look at the tot-board so far... Here we see the US in the lead with 96 gold medals, 127 Silver and 200 bronze. Boy we must be a great country! Now back to coverage of the few events were there are prominent US Athletes who are expected to medal!" Bah!
  • You'll probably notice a pattern: it's all targetted at high-tech groups.. groups, like us. Computers can be used to "terrorize" people? Take down wall street? Crash planes? We've heard it all. Yet, despite all the hype, none of these things have happened. Most errors out there are due to human stupidity - but rather than blame themselves, many organizations choose to use the hype to create their own escape goat. Enter, "The Hacker". A mystical entity nobody can see that seems to have no motivations for anything, yet goes out on wonton destruction. The image falls apart under any scrutiny, yet most people are willing to just accept it - who cares, just gimme my SUV and big screen TV.

    This is media hype, it's not the government - it's not the FBI, yes most people believe it, but those are not people that matter. You are trying to use the fact that the media jumps all over some new buzzword of the day to convince me that some government branch is targetting high-tech users?

    Of course, I don't like the email kiosks being sniffed, but don't try to convince me there is a big government push to persecute the high-tech crowd..

  • Official Sydney2000 site not ADA/w3 Compliant (Score:5)

    by Cy Guy ( 56083 ) on Thursday August 17, 2000 @07:06AM (#849251) Homepage Journal
    Last week ZDNet Australia ran a story [zdnet.com.au] noting complaints from the sight impaired community that the official site for the Games www.olympics.com [olympics.com] failed to provide a significant amount of information formatted in ways that can be read by text only (and therefor text-to-speech enabled) browsers. Examples of non-text friendly data include "the sport index, which provides event schedule information for 36 Olympic sports" and the results of competitions, "Something which [a representative for the site] claims will cost AU$4 million and take 368 days to do," according to one of the complainants.

    This also means that the site is not meeting guidelines laid out by the WWW Consortium [w3.org].

    The combination of not providing a site meeting the needs of all users, and then censoring what others can report from the Games, means a total blackout of Internet information for these users.

  • The difference between an amateur athlete and a professional athlete is the difference between one's wife and a whore...

    Amateurs (true amateurs, who pay with their own money and have no sponsors) do it for the love of their sport. Professional athletes do it for money.

  • "but even more, the real problem is that the IOC is out of touch, out of the loop, and quite possibly too old to understand the internet, the people who use it, and why it is important"

    that's probably true, but it's up to the IOC to change their business practices to work with the changing environment and culture of the world, not up to the users to start pirating the content. It's up to the company to decide to "open source" their content, not for the user to decide to open source it and distribute it for them.

    But this is also why the X-Games, hosted by ESPN and a bunch of others are making such headway into becoming a valid sporting event with strong viewership and financial rewards. They're more in touch with the audience of today and take a different approach to how the events are marketted.

    But again, the IOC doesn't need to respect your rights, you're not contributing to the event at all. You need to respect their rights since they are hosting the event and paying for the event to occur. I'm not saying that their business model will be successful in the coming years, but it's not our job to change it for them. Don't like it, go elsewhere.
  • PBS's Rob Cringely [pbs.org] wrote about the web kiosks at the olympics being intercepted by a carnivore-on-steroids that can choose to bounce emails--not ever deliver them.

    Right. must reduce my caffeine intake before jumping three steps in /. discussion.
  • Quoth the poster:
    it's just selfish to think about yourself before an event that brings the whole world together.
    Yeah, it brings the whole world together, just like a nice refreshing can of Coke! C'mon - sing with me:

    I'd like to buy the world a Coke
    and keep it company ...
    You can't be serious - can you? The Olympics have degenerated from an amateur competition into a gigantic marketing blitz for multi-nationals. Amateur - when they lost that, they lost something very important. There are already many arenas in the world for paid athletes, and they get press all the time. How much of the "Sports" section in your local paper is devoted to paid athletics: 80%? 95% of the front page?

    Furthermore, what part of the Olympics do you really see? The events in which the US is favored to win, pretty much. The events which generate the most advertising dollars. It's pretty clear - if NBC can't sell ads for it, they won't show it. For most people, the Olympics is a feverish contest in which the good old US of A wins a bunch of medals from countries no one's ever heard of.

    Maybe this is ok with you. Maybe you're happy to have your little slice of Olympics served up courtesy of Giganto, Inc., complete with the same professional athletes you know and love from home. Personally, it make me want to puke. If NBC had real broadcast competition they'd have to show more than the top 3 events. That's what this is about: a really profitable Olympics or a really interesting one. Take your pick.

  • It's not just real-time streaming that's being banned, but also media credentials for on-line sports journalists.

    To be honest the level of professionalism displayed by online journalists hardly lends any support to the claim that they deserve to be treated as professionals. I don't blame the IOC for being wary of the "accurate" and "unbiased" internet media.

    ---
    Jon E. Erikson

  • rests upon a huge infrastructure

    That infrastructure is in place to bring MORE MONEY and not to make athlete's life easier.

    How else are they going to obtain this money without licensing and sponsership deals with major corporations?

    I don't care. Why do they need the money in the first place?

    Maybe if the Olimpics will be in <put here a country name> where child porn is legal would that be OK for you that they will advertise child porn during the show in order to make money for the infrastructure?

    Maybe it is OK for you to see the broadcast at TV, but I am in a foreign country and I don't care at all about local athletes, I care about my fellows: I was hoping to be able to find out about them on the internet...

  • It's so lame, anyway. I swear the next thing you'll see is "Joe Smith, wearing his Addias custom made track shoes, has won the preliminaries in the pole vault, which is sponsored by Royal Dutch Shell, next up, the BP Marathon..."

    Makes me sick. This was about sports once, I swear.
    -----------------------------
    1,2,3,4 Moderation has to Go!

  • International broadcasts. (Score:5)

    by Joao ( 155665 ) on Thursday August 17, 2000 @05:28AM (#849259) Homepage
    The main problem I have with this is that any it makes it just about impossible for those of us who want to follow other countries' events here in the United States to do so. If NBC's broadcast is similar to the previous Olympics' broadcast, only the events where American athletes and teams compete AND are likely to win medals, will get any coverage. If web broadcasting was allowed, those of us who are foreigners living in this country should be able to follow our nations' events via webcasts from our national news and sports online sites. But without these webcasts, all we can do is read the results in the next day's papers.
  • If you think about it, NBA superstars can stay more true to the original spirit of the olympics than an amateur. An amateur will see the olympics as his "big break," when he gets to shine and prove how great he is. Patrick Ewing doesn't need to prove anything to the world and can go out there just to play, or just to help his country. Of course there's a lot of room for debate here but I think that established sports players are better than amateurs for the olympics. We should put our best people in the games. After all, what is the point if not to win?

    __________________________________________________ ___

  • Wow, sounds like all we need are CSS-style region codes for the broadcasts and we're all set, right? Oh, wait - region codes are a bad thing.

    Not that it's your fault, but one-day-delayed clips still don't address the real problem: for U.S. audiences, there will be no live coverage of the Olympics by any means - no TV, radio, or 'net broadcasts.

    IOC: Aim carefully at foot, and gently pull the trigger.

  • I can imagine "Net congestion, buffering" on my streaming internet radio, napster, and any other activity I try to engage in online, while the happynet users flood my cable block with the olympics crap that I'm trying real hard to ignore.
  • Well your hearing it now. Allowing the pro hockey players into the olympics really ticked me off. Of course I'm Canadian and we take our hockey pretty seriously up here :)

    We get to see the NHLers compete all the time (eight channels with nothing but hockey off the satellite during the season) With the way they do time shifting now anyone with a Digital Dish or cable can watch every single NHL game with out recourse to a VCR. I want to see the amatuers play.

    The Olympics are supposed to showcase the best athletes from each country. This doesn't happen anymore either. Most events require you to pre qualify for the games. If you can't run the 100m in less than a predetermined time than you are not allowed to compete even if your country wants to send you. So if Sweden doesn't have a really fast runner they don't get to send their Fastest runner. The likes of Eddie The Eagle [hackwriters.com] will never again be seen ( They created a rule named after him).

  • Might be interesting to see (assuming IBM Doesn't change their mind about being sponsor) if whoever runs the olympic site runs it on IBM Big Iron.
  • I submittted this yesterday with a few questions. I guess it got lost in the madness. Of course it was a little more intelligent then the main post here... my questions to /. folks are... how in the heck can they stop bbc from web posting information before hand??? or any other news agency that watches it on TV from Australia through to Canada's 24 hr live broadcast? It seems to me to be like sticking your finger in the hole of the damn that is cracking due tot he pressure of information wanting to get out. Does NBC have to power to realistically stop people watching satelitte TV on Christmas island from posting the live info?

    The internet can make fools of us all

  • Ok, this is fucked.... follow me

    "I don't see the Olympics being much of a factor on Internet advertising."

    Until the online Olympics audience becomes much bigger, advertisers will continue to spend their ad budgets on TV. Yet this audience won't grow in any meaningful way until some of the Olympic restrictions are lifted and sites are able to afford broadcast rights.

    now.... on http://www.supercomp.org/sc98/TechPapers/sc98_Full Abstracts/Challenger602 [supercomp.org] it says they received over 600 million hits during the 1998 olympics. What's up with that????

    BTW, check out that site above because you linux folk will like their approach to mass distributed web serving...

  • Okkay, so the IOC is banning the net from the olympics. Or are they? As far as I knew, MSNBC's website [msnbc.com] was the Internet mirror to NBC news, which includes a robust sports section [msnbc.com]. Will they be banning the broadcast of Olympic related news on this website as well? That seems like a bum deal for a news org that shelled out the bucks to get exclusive coverage.

    And as for pirate Olympic broadcasters, give me a break! American audiences are growing less and less interested in the Games as it is. Do they honestly think that some Aussie kid with a geocities website and a digital camera is going to give NBC serious coverage competition with 20-pixel-tall pictures of figure skaters, slightly masked by the back of some guy's head?

    Think hard...

    I THINK NOT!
  • I mean honestly, how many people really watch the Olympics on TV for any long period of time. I'll flip them on if something interesting is happening but thats about it.

    Shutting out the Internet. Hmmm. Maybe there vision is limited. If they're looking to hire a developer to make this happen let me know I think it would be a very cool project:

    • Web site listing all events with links to home pages dedicated to that event
    • Event homepages can provide history of event, summary stats, schedule for that event of the couple of weeks
    • Provide highlight summary clips of important news for that days worth competition.
    • Provide realtime video of events as they take place
    • Provide the same realtime video at a later date in the event somebody can't watch the event at its scheduled time
    • Lets not forget merchandizing. Get your official Olympic discus signed by team USA, etc.
    • etc., etc.

    I think a big turn off with the Olympics is that I can't watch certain events because of my personal schedule. However, perhaps I would like to view the entire boxing competition, at home, on a Saturday after its finished, rather than getting the distilled facts from my favorite sports program.

    I understand the desire to keep up with tradition, etc., but I think making use of the above concepts and technologies (minus the merchandizing maybe) will allow that heritage to thrive even more so than current methods of broadcast. Look what's happened to the world of figure skating since its been broadcasted more and more. Why not maximize that broadcast range for all Olympic games?

  • When you think about carefully, the Spanish Empire rests upon a huge infrastructure, and this, unsuprisingly enough, costs a lot of money. How else are they going to obtain this money without sending mercenaries to rape and pillage in the New World.

    What is all of this drivel supposed to mean? Are you trying to make some kind of "point" here? The IOC is hardly oppressing anybody, merely deciding on who gets to watch an event they own. Nothing could be fairer.

    I've said it before and I'll say it again: Your wish to make money does not take precedence over my right to share information.

    Yes, I'm sure you can justify theft in many ways. But it's not your information, and just because you don't want to pay for it doesn't make it any less true. Sorry.

    ---
    Jon E. Erikson

  • Then why don't you boycott the games if you feel they treat you like "eyeballs"? Then again, interest in the Sydney games has been waning in the USA because 1) it's not in Atlanta (stupid) 2) the Summer Olympics are boring. Toss in the fact that they are half a world away (the main reason they aren't allowing internet coverage, I'd guess) and you would be watching videotapes of finished events. Hell with boycotting it, since there never was a reason to WATCH in the first place!

  • Quokka [quokka.com]'s a company that was largely built on the promise of the 2000 games on the web.

    NBC is a major partner, and they teamed up to make NBC Olympics [nbcolympics.com] site. Realtime stats and progress of sporting events is what Quokka's all about. Are they supposed to abandon the games? Doesn't NBC's agreement cover this?

    If not, they got royally rooked because they've poured millions and millions into a web presence and information dissemination point for the games, and paid the IOC a huge sum for the exclusive rights.

    Kevin Fox
  • I'm at 1024x768, but I prefer to run multiple browser windows. Most Slashdot stories look just fine, but sometimes a poorly constructed header or troll will make the entire article scroll-happy until it's fixed or moderated down.

    Here, I used the comments-only facility to filter out the header.
  • If the kiosks allow people to setup SMTP email, and allow carnivore to intercept them, then all tohse clear-text passwords sent over SMTP get dropped off with the rest of the mail at some Schmoe's desk at the FBI.

    OK, so the shutting-down-the-internet article was bit off base, but if there is any accuracy to this at all, then this is a real issue on privacy expectations.

    Paranoia's just a fun hobby until you start reading your website's logfiles.
  • you're not contributing to the event at all

    Based on the number of corporate sponshorships that the Olympics get, it's hard to believe any one of us is NOT contributing in some way. Firms spending money in this way can only be subsidized by sales revenue. Marketing dollars don't grow on trees. Money spent on advertising is ultimately skimmed from corporate profits, which means that to maintain that profit level and provide money to the Olympics, a corporation must work this into prices at some point. Furthermore, it seems odd to me that ESPN.com which is a subsidiary of Disney, and hence partnered with ABC, would be operating in a vacuum in trying to use the internet as a distribution method. If this is somehow injurious to prime-time TV, why is that the IOC's concern? It should be Disney's concern.

    In fact, there would be tremendous revenue opportunity due to low marginal cost of increasing internet audiences, through use of things like pay-per-stream video of offbeat events, etc. Example: I am a fan of an offbeat sport, I would gladly pay to be able to select matches or athletes and watch those either in real-time or even after the fact. There is every opportunity for any major advertiser to put a banner across the bottom of a streamed video (and I'm surprised there isn't more of this already) as a way to further generate revenue.

  • Not Watching Much Anyway (Score:5)

    by hughesma ( 164101 ) on Thursday August 17, 2000 @05:46AM (#849279)

    Personally, I'm not going to be watching much of the Olympics. Why? Cuz I like to see the events, not the two dozen "Life Stories" that take up 90% of the broadcast time. Sure, it's great that Bob the Sprinter overcame but I wanna see him race. Not that I don't have feelings for the guy, but I seriously doubt said problem is on his mind when he's neck and neck with Sam the Speedy. These guys and gals aren't here because of commercials. They came here to do their best. TV on the other hand... Anyone remember that much hyped Greene vs Johnson?

    My personal off topic rant - I'm a distance runner. Have been for almost 16 years now so I do enjoy watching those races that aren't over in a matter of seconds. Unfortunetly, anything that takes more than 5 minutes to complete, the Networks don't see fit to broadcast. I want to see who wins the 10,000 or the Marathon. These are my idols and heroes. These are the people who don't have huge endorsement contracts. They work their 9-5 jobs, fit in time for training, and pull this all off with very little financial support from anyone else. But unless I go to a speciality site (www.runnersworld.com for instance), I can't find out if my idols managed to pull off their life dream. The Networks don't care.

  • Being an online sports journalist [sportseditor.com] myself, I'd kindly suggest you go suck an egg. While there are plenty of hacks out there running there own sites, there are also a plethora of professionally run, independent online sports journals (follow the link in my sig to the best independent hockey site on the web - www.inthecrease.com).

  • /. is getting nice and confusing with Troll's aplenty but I'm still going to assume your for real and tell you how I see it.

    Many of the olympic sports are contested between athletes who are heros at home, basketball is no exception to this. I personally believe that first and foremost an olympic gold medal should say you are the best, not that you are the best of all those people who aren't good enough to earn money from their sport. I love to see the NBA superstars in the Olympics because they raise the level of competition and I will love it even more the first year they lose the final (it will happen soon enough, how many great foreigners play in the NBA). I haven't read any complaints about tennis, is this because the tennis stars are more evenly distributed on an international scale? Where are the professional boxers? I would love to see Lennox Lewis, the world pro heavywieght champion stepping into an Olympic tournament with about 5 fights ahead of him against unknown opponents (will it be Tyson or Holyfield). The olympics should be about the highest quality of sport first and this will bring the IOC their revenue.

    The way I see it this whole argument draws fabulous parallels to the mp3 and decss arguments, and yet again it is the forces of corporatism (the tv networks and sponsers) fighting against the new technology and its logical conclusions to try and protect their outdated revenue models. Once again they will discover that the horse has bolted and will need to refine their practices to deal with this (one Visor+camera+mobile phone = live webcam, hell you could also have a second mobile to dial a PC which encodes it to a live audio stream). I can understand that the IOC must make the noises to try and ensure they get the money they have been promised, but as long as the NBCs of this world are not covering every event locally live people will go elsewhere to see the events they want (soccer). Why not tell the sites that they can do anything they want as long as they:

    1. don't broadcast live (event must be over before coverage starts) if a licensed broadcaster is present
    2. Carry the official sponsor(s) of the events logo on any page which refers to the event or be sued (so you can avoid this is you make no money of the whole affair, but if you even have a banner on your page....)
    Only losers are the TV companies who can lose advertising revenue directed at events they aren't even showing, or can lose revenue to people who are doing a better job of covering it online without live coverage.
  • What spirit of the games? Let me spell it out for you, folks-- the Olympics are broken.

    From stunts like the Salt Lake City bribes, to that "Dream Team" basketball garbage of several years back, to the simple fact that the participants are "amateurs" only by dint of not being directly paid for their talents (yet), the Games have shifted from being a celebration of worldwide athleticism to a cash cow of Biblical proportions.

    An acquaintance of mine could have been on the Canadian biathlon team-- but for one problem: money. You see, biathletes are (or at least were) required to spend a gawdsawful amount of money on specially designed rifles. He couldn't afford it (he was quoted around 20-25k CDN), and even if he could find a sponsor, he would have considered it unethical.

    My solution to everything Olympic? Shut it down completely. Disband the IOC, and have a hypothetical third party purchase the Olympic trademarks (to prevent their use). Granted, at least a half-dozen competing "worldwide games" would sprout up immediately, but none of them could hide their pretense behind the skirts of Olympic tradition.

  • They can still make money off of Internet coverage, though. Just get a few of those "official Olympic sponsors" to pay extra for the privilege of having their ads run in a frame when you're watching video.

    On top of it all, the quality of Internet video isn't exactly giving TV a run for its money. Can you imagine watching a race, only to see "Net congestion, buffering" as the runners approach the finish line neck-and-neck? Funny, that doesn't usually happen with TV...

  • If the IOC really wants to make money... (Score:4)

    by TopShelf ( 92521 ) on Thursday August 17, 2000 @05:35AM (#849293) Homepage Journal
    They would compartmentalize the Games into various sections (Track & Field, gymnastics, martial arts, etc) and auction off the broadcast rights seperately. By doing so they would be likely to get much higher overall revenue, and the Games would be covered much more completely and professionally. Just think of all the events that aren't going to be covered because there is an artificial limit on TV time.

  • terrorism? (Score:3)

    by Signal 11 ( 7608 ) on Thursday August 17, 2000 @05:35AM (#849294)
    Terrorism is a joke. No, seriously - when was the last time you heard about a terrorist using his quad xeon box and e-commerce software to take over the world? Terrorists, by and far, use low-tech solutions. Bombs, death threats, taking hostages - none of these require web access, cell phones, or even computers.

    Even "biowarfare", the latest buzzword law enforcement is using to scare us (before it was "The Bomb" - which had school children crouching under their desks to avoid "The Bomb".. really useful, that). Let's think about it for a moment:

    There's alot of substances out there that can cause serious health problems. Many of them are in your house. Uncontrolled. This doesn't concern the FBI or law enforcement a bit. Take two common things you probably have in your laundry room - bleach and chlorine. Everyone knows what mixing those does. The FBI is woefully underpreparing for its latest "threat".

    So, I think I've managed to demonstrate reasonable doubt over who our government's targets are. Now, let's take all the recent legislation and put it together. You'll probably notice a pattern: it's all targetted at high-tech groups.. groups, like us. Computers can be used to "terrorize" people? Take down wall street? Crash planes? We've heard it all. Yet, despite all the hype, none of these things have happened. Most errors out there are due to human stupidity - but rather than blame themselves, many organizations choose to use the hype to create their own escape goat. Enter, "The Hacker". A mystical entity nobody can see that seems to have no motivations for anything, yet goes out on wonton destruction. The image falls apart under any scrutiny, yet most people are willing to just accept it - who cares, just gimme my SUV and big screen TV.

    Our government DOES have a target - it is the computer industry. They want to regulate it. By regulate, I mean control. They understand, as do we, that technological progress is the way the wealth of various countries are generated. I can't blame them for wanting to control it.. but I think it's misplaced. I recall the USSR had a similar method of control.. with disasterous results. The first step in that control, however, is to demonize the people and technology which will make it easy for people to swallow the lie that it is "for their protection".

    Beware of any legislator who claims something is necessary "for your protection". Be very, very wary.

  • When you think about carefully, the Spanish Empire rests upon a huge infrastructure, and this, unsuprisingly enough, costs a lot of money. How else are they going to obtain this money without sending mercenaries to rape and pillage in the New World

    I've said it before and I'll say it again: Your wish to make money does not take precedence over my right to share information.

    Let's also not forget that mercantilism eventually almost completely destroyed the Spanish economy through hyperinflation.

  • So what else is news? (Score:5)

    by softsign ( 120322 ) on Thursday August 17, 2000 @05:54AM (#849304)
    The IOC has long made a mockery of the ideals it pretends to preach.

    For the 1992 Games in Barcelona, the IOC decreed that athletes from the breakaway nations of the former USSR were not in fact entitled to be recognized as such. They were forced to play for the "Commonwealth of Independent States". Just another throwback to the glorious days of Soviet domination and a slap in the face to athletes who were robbed of the opportunity to represent their native countries.

    Why was this permitted to happen? Because the IOC is the epitome of a greedy, self-serving, multinational corporation [thenation.com].

    For the link impaired, here is just a brief summary of the article:

    • NBC has paid $3 570 000 000 for rights to the Games through to 2008
    • Juan Antonio Samaranch
      • Joined the Youth Fascists in Spain during his teenage years
      • Later went on to become a member of Franco's rubber-stamp government
    • While the IOC's 106 members have only 7 women among their ranks, they do manage to find room for:
      • a former operative of Korea's brutal intelligence service
      • a onetime ally of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin
      • an Italian businessman who presided over medal rigging at the 1987 track and field world championships in Rome, and
      • a reputed arms dealer
    • the IOC is in no way accountable to the athletes or to national Olympic committees worldwide for how it disposes of the $2 billion in receipts it pulls in every four years

    These are the people who proclaim to represent the ideal of amateur sport: of fair play and of the innocence of honest competition.

    These back-stabbing, power-hungry bastards.

    Considering this, that the IOC is making another power grab and shutting out the Internet, is not surprising in the least.

    --

  • Are you suggesting "regional encoded" Olympic events?
  • The IOC claims that the Internet harms the spirit of the games. Just as it seemed that TV did. I'm sure that same beautiful spirit will suddenly embrace the Internet as soon as someone actually figures out how to use the Internet to make money.

    Ah well, the Olympics is built on a contradiction anyway: that the success of individuals in a country reflects the strength of that country as a whole. But tying geographic politics into athletics is about as arbitrary as you can get.

  • I know what you mean. My sport is NEVER shown on NBC (I'm a fencer). And NBC's coverage sucks... I was surfing in '96 and came across the rowing competition, and the camera crew kept on the US rowers, even though they were way out of the running... The announcers for all sports were something like:

    Look! There's the Americans. Oh yeah, there's some furriners over there, but look at those Americans, even if they are in 5th place. Oh yeah, some furriners are also competing.

    And I thought ABC's coverage in '84 was bad... Where's Jim McKay when you need him? (For those who are too young to remember, McKay did a brilliant job when pressed into service as a "real" reporter on the '72 Munich hostage crisis).
  • I used to be a huge fan of the Olympics. Now the Summer Olympics I used to wait every 4 years to see, I will never see again. In fact, I'm disgusted that you can even act as if there's any sort of camraderie left in this highly commercialized, sponsor driven orgy of capitalism.

    Read my brother's editorial on how there will be NO live coverage of the Olympics, and basically why we hate what NBC has done to the Games.

    Do you want to see the Olympics? DON'T watch NBC. [epinions.com]

    I seem to remember the Olympics running pre-NBC coverage just fine. I got round-the-clock coverage of sports I wanted to see, and learned about sports I'd never heard of. Table Tennis, Team Handball, Fencing, the High Jump...all of that isn't going to be ANYWHERE on NBC.

    Instead, I can look forward to seeing a whole week and a half of GYMNASTICS! WOO F*CKING HOO! In between, we'll show the Dream Team 70 beat every other team in the world with coaches alone, and some human interest stories about those beloved Gymnasts, and if the Women's Soccer doesn't lose, you can bet there will be a day or two of them.

    When I was young, corporations ran HUGE promotions with the Olympics...but I still saw live coverage of sports. All the sports. In fact, I wish McDonalds would run sponsorship they way they ran it back in '88 and '84. They gave you these little scratch cards with prizes for Bronze, Silver and Gold. If the US won a medal in that event, you won the prize scratched off. You got some really random events like Women's Field Hockey and stuff, but you wanted that Big Mac, so you watched that event.

    Now the only people I see getting excited about the Olympics are women. Because here are the events you will see on NBC, F*CKING GUARANTEED:

    • Women's Indivdual Gymnastics
    • Women's Team Gymnastics
    • Men's Indivdual Gymnastics
    • Women's Team Gymnastics
    • Swimming
    • Synchronized Swimming
    • Women's Diving
    • Men's Diving
    • Women's Soccer
    • Cycling Road Race (Only because of Lance Armstrong.)
    • Track (No & Field...just track. Only the 100, 200 and 400 most likely.)


    The Olympics I loved as a kid are gone. I have to derive my own enjoyment by looking at the box scores to find out who won, but now I'm not going to even be able to find out about those real time. "Pirate" the Olympics, go right f*cking ahead!

    In addition, do you have any idea how ordinary people like you & me get tickets for the games? We'd would ostensibly send away money to reserve our tickets. If they're popular events, you won't get tickets, but get this, if you don't get a seat, THEY F*CKING KEEP YOUR MONEY ANYWAY!

    My brother went to the games in Atlanta. He ran into people who lost upwards of $5,000 trying to get tickets for events that the sponsors had ALREADY FILLED, and they got JACK SHIT for $5,000.

    This year, to make room for extra cameras, they booted another group of people from the opening cermonies...no refunds for them! What kind of f*cking scam is that?! Sell the seat 4 times over, don't give refunds, and award the seat to a sponsor. The IOOC and NBC win the gold again this year for screwing the people UP THE ASS!
  • The athletes where amatuer, the IOC never was!
  • Of course you're right about the IOC needing to finance themselves and the Olypics costing a lot of money, but over the last few years, the IOC have shown themselves to be such money grubbing whores that it's hard to take them seriously when they say all these altruistic things about "tradition".

    -B
  • You can question my "logic" all you want, but I didn't write the book on time zones. If you built a house on the International Date Line, the kitchen and the living room could be 24 hours away. Of course, you'd need a system to deal with the water that would be constantly flooding your house, but that's another issue.
  • Hushmail was the first thought in my mind when I read Cringeley's article. I'd love to see an open source version of a mail reader, similar to Imp, using either SSL or a java applet with a reasonable encryption.

    A better solution for major companies is to block external access to their internal e-mail, thus forcing their executives to use something other than kiosks to check in. There will be a worry of keystroke grabbers on the kiosks, and packet sniffers at various locations on that network. I would expect any smart company already forbids logging into the company network from the internet side, except for a slightly secured home machine. Certainly you wouldn't log into root on your home machine from an olympic kiosk, would you?

    As for terrorists needing communications, they probably do. If it is a small group of inbred hicks from north carolina wanting to set off pipe bombs, they may be stupid enough to email each other with enough information for the FBI to pick them up after the fact. They might use cell phones, assuming they can't be tracked, or maybe even pay phones. The sad fact, for terrorists, is that the counter-terrorist parts of the FBI cover all forms of communication already.

    Rumour has it the algerian terrorists in france a few years ago shunned all electronic communication, making it very difficult for the french to track them down. All communication between the cells was face to face, the only exception was a guy in Lille made a call on a payphone in his neigborhood to a payphone in Lyon, and that unwrapped the case. The french anti-terrorist investigators had to fall back on footwork and following leads the old fashioned way, which is why it took years to capture most of the terrorists.

    the AC
    (I just realised my post has enough keywords in it to trigger every echelon filter from here to langley :-)
  • As much as it may pain download-happy net users, I think that the IOC is right to prevent websites from broadcasting the Olympics, and even more right to be worried about people sneaking in with digital cameras and mobile phones for live broadcasts.



    Ohh, so just because the IOC wants a few more bucks I'm going to miss the TKD and Judo prelims and lower ranked bouts. They only show the final few rounds of the Martial arts competitions if even that much. I'm REALLY looking forward to seeing some of the people I've competed with fight in the Olympics this year, and If I miss them because of this I'm gonna be pissed.

    Kintanon
  • Forget digital cameras and cell phones for a minute -- let's just consider good ol' fashioned written word. How does the IOC expect to prevent journalists from ESPN.com from simply buying event tickets and running quick write-ups about them?

    If score results and highlights are posted on a 15-minute delay, and television coverage is on a 15-hour delay, how much interest will US audiences still have? Most prime time Olympics viewers are white collar -- which means they will read the written web coverage at work.

    The IOC can keep out cameras, if they handle events like a rock concert -- with bouncer/ushers roaming the stands. They can't really keep out cell phones, though. How tough would web-based radio coverage be? A lapel-mounted mic to a cell phone dialed into an office across town could record the entirety of an event without trouble.

    What is the legal ground for preventing this? Are they expecting to put a fair-use agreement on the back of every ticket? What is Australian law on freedom of the press?

    The irony is that if they *would* formulate agreements with 'net sites, then they could contractually limit their actions. But by refusing outright to grant them press privledges, they have no rights to limit anything they do! I hope some people get in there and cover it just out of spite.

    I can understand the IOC wanting to protect their coverage -- the amazing part is that they are failing to do EXACTLY THAT!
  • the olympics used to be for the amateur. then "sports superstars" starting showing up like the "NBA Dreamteam". how ridiculous. now the independent internet media groups cant even cover something that is supposed to be for the world. very sad.

  • The IOC could have made millions allowing Internet sites like ESPN.com and Sportsline to buy rights to deliver content from the Olympics. They even refused to allow radio play-by-play coverage! Instead, they insist that NBC is the only authorized provider for the Olympics, shutting out many other partners.

    I can't wait for the wonderful live-on-tape NBC coverage, like when they showed Kerri Strug's winning vault in '96 (in ATLANTA, in the SAME FRIGGIN TIME ZONE as New York) on tape. Meanwhile, Kerri was being interviewed on Larry King Live _before_ viewers even saw her vault on TV.
  • I think that the IOC is right to prevent websites from broadcasting the Olympics, and even more right to be worried about people sneaking in with digital cameras and mobile phones for live broadcasts.

    -"I'm sorry sir but you can't bring that handy cam in here."
    -"But my son/daughter is competing!"

    When you think about carefully, the Olympics rests upon a huge infrastructure, and this, unsuprisingly enough, costs a lot of money. How else are they going to obtain this money without licensing and sponsership deals with major corporations? Selling drugs? Running arms?

    I wonder how the columbian olympic committee fundraises?

    The Olympics is the greatest sporting event in the world, and since it's only once every 4 years anyway I don't think it's unfair of the IOC to use it finance themselves. After all, its for the good of every country in the world that competes in the Olympics.

    Yeah the IOC and Wan Antonio Samaranch, use it to fund thier jet setting lifestyles. They take bribes from whomever they can get them from, and live like kings. All for the greater glory of amature sport. Denver was just the tip of the iceberg, and you are naive to think that this event does good for every country. This event does good for some (small) number of individuals, who take bribes, get contracts, or get enough fame so that the local banana dictator doesn't decide to shoot them tomorrow. What about all the people who go home as failures to the scourge of thier local despot.

    As for how often the olympics are, well they used to be both winter and summer games the same year, then they got moved to two years offset, so that the IOC could make more money. Further, if someone rips you off once every four years, then they're still ripping you off (see below).

    Unfortunately what with the attitude of most /.ers that everything should be "free" and online, I'm sure that there'll be attmepts to get pirate coverage, sneak people in and the like. I wish they wouldn't - it's just selfish to think about yourself before an event that brings the whole world together.

    You'll be watching the synchronized swimming, and the trampolining right?... I am sick and tired of hearing that every /. is out to steal every piece of content in existance. The fact is that the Olympics in thier current form serve as a vehicle for the IOC and everyone on down to get richer. IOC gets gifts, lifestyle, etc. Companies, get advertising, prestige. Athletes, get fame and contracts. Now, that money has to come form somewhere. In the end that money comes from the consumer/tax payer. This ends up being transfered to me as either increased product cost, to recoup advertising, or as crappy service (a la NBC -will someone please take bob costas out back and put him out of the world's collective misery). So, first off, I'm already paying for all this crap if I like it or not. Second, if you want noone to see the games, and you to control their distibution, hold them at the bottom of the nutrino observatory (bottom of a mine shaft). Practically speaking either the olympics, and the world cup are not held in asia/ociania untill the local markets for sport make the US and europe irrelevant, or the people involved will agree that the scores have to be presented in realtime. How are you going to stop the parent of an athlete from putting up thier home video on a website for thier friends to see? This is the result of the low cost of telecoms, not the greed of /.ers.

    --locust

  • You know, the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), has the rights to broadcast the Olympics in Canada and, in the past, they've done a wonderful job of covering events evenly. Of course, this might be because they're a Crown corporation with little incentive to turn a profit (other than public outrage) and thus can afford to dedicate 14 hours of the broadcast day to the Olympics. =)

    Notwithstanding, in the past I have seen plentiful coverage of boxing, rowing, equestrian, taekwondo, fencing, weightlifting, swimming, diving, marathons, cycling and pretty much all the cool sports that hardly get a mention on NBC.

    I think it stems from the fact that Canada doesn't really dominate any given event at the Summer Olympics. But it's nice to see that champion athletes like Sergei Bubka or Haile Gebreselasse do exist, even when they aren't in direct competition with Pete Johnson from Boston and Joe Smith from Atlanta.

    I've found NBC's "coverage" of the games to be, at best, simply repulsive. I live in Windsor, so we pick up Detroit's NBC affiliate, and it is unbelievable how skewed the angle is on NBC.

    Every time I watch their coverage, I'm reminded of the old SNL skit where Jason Priestly is the American entry at the World Figure Skating Championships. He keeps falling over and messing up, but the commentators keep talking about his medal shot.

    --

  • Ohh, so just because the IOC wants a few more bucks I'm going to miss the TKD and Judo prelims and lower ranked bouts. They only show the final few rounds of the Martial arts competitions if even that much. I'm REALLY looking forward to seeing some of the people I've competed with fight in the Olympics this year, and If I miss them because of this I'm gonna be pissed.

    Kintanon

    A-flonqing-men!

    I hold a belt in TKD (black stripe) and I _REALLY_ would love to see the Olympic TKD competiton.

    But I won't. Because it's not swimming, it's not track-and-field, and it's not gymnastics.

    And I'm irritated highly. Probably going to give the entire Olympics a miss because of it.

    I'd also love to see the fencing bouts. Or Olympic Judo. Won't see either one.

    *sigh*

    Redhawk

  • A few observations... (Score:4)

    by ZoneGray ( 168419 ) on Thursday August 17, 2000 @06:03AM (#849352) Homepage
    I've been involved in a bit of sports reporting, and this doesn't surprise me in the least.

    First of all, no matter what the sport is, video is video, and the rights to transmit it are sold, period. Doesn't matter how it's distributed, if you're not a TV licensee, you're not allowed to do video. Some sports allow extraneous video to news outlets, like locker-room press conferences and pre-gmae stuff. But once the event starts, only the licensed video is shot. The NFL has been allowing local sports reporters to tape segments on the sidelines during the games, but that's the only exception that comes to mind.

    Traditionally, the threshhold for getting media credentials was whether you had a publication or not. The cost of printing and distribution was enough of a barrier to separate the real reporters from the wannabes.

    But since the 'net has come to prominence, it's lowered those barriers so much that event officials are swamped with requests. And the way they usually deal iwth it is to simply refuse credentials to all online organizations. Indeed, I've seen situations where we had been credentialled for years, but once the 'net became a buzzword, we were shut out, or at least had to remind the organizers that we had been there all along.

    It also gets sticky when you realize that an online reporter can post reports before the event is over, something that print journalists couldn't do. Even a text report during the game blows their mind, since it treads on those valuable broadcast rights. One organizer offered us credentials with the provision that we would refrain from posting any reports until after midnight. When we said no thanks, they offered to sell us broadcast rights.

    Not to say that this is all wrong, either; no event organizer can afford to provide press facilities for every bozo with a web site, and the lines between broadcast and 'netcast are indeed quite blurry. It's just one of the curiosities of the way the 'net has changed things. By lowering the barriers to entry, it has increased the number of "journalists" to such an extent that nobody really knows which ones have a legitimate readership.
  • Actually, the NBA superstars have *everything* to prove. They are paid multi-millions, are spokespersons for major companies, and are in huge games on national TV weekly. They are considered the best of the best in the world.

    If they *don't* play perfectly, if they lose, or even falter to any other team, they will be humiliated. Personally and nationally and professionally. It would be like the Brazilian soccer team losing a game to a local high school team. They would be a laughing-stock.

    I think they have much to lose a little to gain except more ego a shiny gold medal. An amateur has much to lose (he's spent his life training for this), but much to gain (fame, fortune, validation, etc.)

  • "Your wish to make money does not take precedence over my right to share information."

    Yes it does - if you do not have legal rights to that information, you have no right to share it.

    --

  • Did you know that there's such a thing as the International Date Line? The same line that prevents you from going back in time by flying faster than the Earth's rotation also plays an important role in the usage of time zones. Take New York time and add 15 hours, and you get Australia time. (11:16 AM Thu -> 2:16 AM Fri, for example) Take New York time and subtract nine hours, and you get 11:16 AM Thu -> 2:16 AM Thu. Oh, and then account for the International Date Line. Whoops. That's 15 hours.

    Sorry, thanks for playing.

  • It ain't just the Olympics! (Score:4)

    by TopShelf ( 92521 ) on Thursday August 17, 2000 @05:14AM (#849360) Homepage Journal
    On-line sports journalists have always had difficulty getting taken seriously by some organizations. The NCAA (at this year's Final Four) in particular has been less than supportive of this new medium for getting sports news and information out to a waiting audience. A nice summary of the issues involved can be found here [sportseditor.com]

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