[Update: over at theprivatelifeofthepublicintellectual they rectify the apparently false assertions in my tongue-in-cheek 'piece' about the IOC; although the blog entry was far less a serious journalistic undertaking then a pulling together of some chatter about the topic over the net, in twitter-ville, etc., I've updated it [in square brackets, mine un-bolded, theirs bolded] so as to better represent the facts as they've now been so graciously explained to us.]
The International Olympic Committee has teamed up with YouTube [Not necessarily: "YouTube will pull videos from anyone, for any reason, on behalf of any corporate entity in the world. It's in their policy!"] to block a news roundup of this past weekend's anti-Olympic protest events by the Vancouver Media Co-op (which you should now be able to view here, via Blip). This indicates, among other things (censorship, for one) that the IOC [may be] unnerved by the protests [PLOPI says, probably correctly, "I don’t think the IOC is probably actually all that scared of the Olympics resistance movement..."] and the VMC's on-the-spot coverage of all things anti-Olympics. ["the point is not—and should not be—that the IOC is having YouTube pull only those videos it finds offensive...It isn’t. The IOC has precluded what it—or for that matter anyone else—may find offensive by endeavoring to control all appearances of its image and name whatsoever."]
Democracy Now!, by contrast, is in Vancouver today, where they featured a piece by the VMC's Franklin Lopez, along with an interview with Am Johal, chair of the Impact on Communities Coalition.
[Update:] Last night, another instance of [seeming] IOC censorship (click on image):
This [still] brings to mind an article in the current issue of This Magazine, which provides this 'artists impression' of the "video wall" that BC taxpayers pay for IOC President Jacques Rogge to have in his hotel room, "a requirement of IOC regulations, which state that the president must have enough screens to be able to watch every Olympic event underway at any given time—simultaneously":
Presumably, someone at the IOC (if not Rogge himself) has a wall of computers in front of them as well, monitoring supposed copyright violations. [Obviously, with others to do their dirty-work for them, they don't need such a wall, although it's difficult to imagine that the IOC does not employ any resources policing the use of their 'image and name.'] That's all, except for this message from our (un-)sponsor:
PLOPI also points to the democratic paradox that gave rise to the Web of Democracy in the first place:
"The problem is...that censorship isn’t bad because it keeps the messages we want out of the outlets we want to see them in. Censorship is bad because, in a democracy, we are guaranteed rights to freedom of expression—of any kind we want."
- Lastly, PLOPI's comments section points to more on seeming IOC heavy-handedness at VirtualWhister: "The IOC has lodged a complaint with Google against a post of one of the authors of this blog. The author is an 8 year old girl (JabberJ) who posted a short 10 second video of one of our fellow Canadian athletes...I encourage everyone to click and check out the video and leave your comments on what you think about it. It was removed from YouTube so I had to post it on my personal server."