Breaking News: Olympic Censorship of Vancouver Media Coop

Update: VMC has re-posted the video which was censored from Youtube [details below] on blip.tv here. I was right, there is nothing from this video that belongs to the IOC... their reason for censoring youtube is likely the Carrie Serwetnyk's interview.


Original Posting:
Wow, I just ambled over to the VMC page this afternoon to checkout the latest news and what did I find:

The same for the youtube:
What is going on here? Judging by the screenshot of this censored video,
it looks like it features Carrie Serwetnyk, who was diverted from her torch bearing run on commercial drive Friday. But the earlier VMC video:

is still up on the VMC video list.

So what is going on? What is the "copyright" violation? These videos are produced by VMC then broadcast via youtube. I would really like to see what is in that video and what the IOC claims they own even when it is just a video of protest made in Vancouver with the Olympics as the backdrop.

While researching this I found a few interesting articles about the IOC's heavy handed approach to information control: Covering competing logos, Antagonistic to Independent Media, they also got Amy Goodman stopped at the border afraid she would talk about the Olympics. They've copyrighted the numbers 2010 and our national anthem - so maybe the video just has people singing O Canada in it?

I do also know they have -- in my view -- abused the laws in Canada to protect their trademarks and official exclusive merchandise. Because the Olympics are a publicly funded entity here, VANOC has somehow been able to claim crown protection over their sport event logos. This crown trademark law is designed to prevent people illegally copying the logo from the police, fire or ambulance - that sort of thing. It is for those special cases only. But somehow the Olympics got their logo in with the same protection as if copying the olympic logo (or having had it up for years before the games) is akin to fraudulently pretending to be an ambulance!

Given the IOC track record, I must assume this recent video takedown is equally spurious -- that is until I can see the video and judge for myself. Fortunately this is video created by the VMC and only posted on youtube so presumably they will find another way to post this desperately needed dissenting dialogue video.

Shame on the IOC then for this recent suppression of disagreement. How do they get away with this? Will we continue to let them?

The mural by Jesse Corcoran is just so apt for the situation both with the artwork itself and how it was taken down.

----

PS The IOC is also trying to bully the British Media to stop them reporting on the negative stories about the Olympics!