February 23, 2010 | Digital Rights

As you might have heard, Georgian luge slider Nodar Kumaritashvili died in luge training at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver on February 12.

The International Olympics Committee has been using copyright to suppress videos of the event.

If you look at the result for the top YouTube hit on on Google video search for “luge death“, that video has been deleted by YouTube due to a copyright claim by the IOC.

That’s the same story for a lot of the results for the videos you get if you search for “luge death” on YouTube.

The IOC has also been trying to remove a video put up by blogger Steve Pate at Not Just the News Network. However, the videos were still up at the time of this post.

Interestingly, the Huffington Post and CBS News seem to still be hosting the video, with the former also showing pictures.

My comments

By all accounts, the luge track was ridiculously dangerous, and faster than it had ever been before. With lugers reaching speeds of 95 miles per hour, many commented that they were being treated like crash-test dummies. (See the picture at NJNN.)

This was a tragic death but the IOC’s attempts to suppress the videos of it are pathetic, wrong, and immoral. The IOC has just gotten so used to controlling anything and everything remotely connected to the Olympics, the word “Olympic”, or any competitors, that I think it’s on autopilot as far as automatically using DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) notices regardless of the newsworthiness of a brief excerpt, which is all that the NJNN blog used.

First of all, the only reason that the IOC could possibly think that they could tell someone to post or not post content relating to the Olympics is the copyright laws. In the US, anyway, the copyright laws are based on the copyright cluase of the Constitution

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

So how does the Olympic committee censoring the luge tragedy videos promote the useful arts?

I reject the idea that the video needs to be banned out of respect for the luger’s family. If anything, the video needs to be spread far and wide to show the Olympic organizers’ culpability in putting up unbelievably low barriers on the sides of the luge course.

Isn’t it strange that there’s supposed to be a separate category of people (reporters) who are authorized to view primary sources, and they they’re supposed to tell us what happened, but we can’t see for ourselves? That worked for the newspaper and TV era, but with the Internet, there’s no reason at all for people not to be able to see the actual news occurring and make up their minds for themselves instead of hearing newsmen debate current events.

Finally, under Canadian law (Steve Pate is Canadian, and NNJN is a Canadian site), there is explicit permission under the law to use brief excerpts under “fail dealing” (the Canadian version of “fair use”).

Other blogs following the story include TechDirt and Michael Geist. Discussion at Slashdot. Direct download link for the video.

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Explore related content: censorship, copyright, imaginary property, IOC, luge, luge death video, Not Just the News Network, Olympics, Steve Pate, YouTube

7 Responses to “IOC Bans Olympic Luge Death Videos on YouTube: Copyright / Copywrong”

1. IOC Bans Olympic Luge Death Video on YouTube - Copyright Copywrong | NJN Network says:

   February 24, 2010 at 9:07 am

   [...] Nodar Kumaritashvili making the fatal run [...]
2. Best Tube Site says:

   August 1, 2010 at 4:59 pm

   Good article, Youtube has always caved in to pressure regarding copyright complaints, but the luge incident is just ridiculous. People should be able to see footage of newsworthy events to make up their own mind…
3. animes says:

   September 15, 2010 at 12:36 pm

   Updating Ubuntu Boot CD Images with zsync As I mentioned in a article on Ubuntu Boot
4. Kelsie Musselman says:

   January 30, 2011 at 5:37 am

   There is clearly a great deal to understand about this. I think you produced some excellent points in Attributes also.
   Keep working , wonderful career!
5. Marcellus Haye says:

   February 1, 2011 at 1:07 am

   Sweet blog! I found it while browsing on Yahoo News. Do you have any suggestions on how to get listed in Yahoo News? I’ve been trying for a while but I never seem to get there! Appreciate it
6. Nestor Cayce says:

   April 24, 2011 at 6:34 am

   With havin so much content and articles do you ever run into any issues of plagorism or copyright violation? My website has a lot of completely unique content I’ve either written myself or outsourced but it looks like a lot of it is popping it up all over the web without my permission. Do you know any solutions to help reduce content from being stolen? I’d really appreciate it.
7. Cates Law Firm says:

   August 21, 2011 at 9:03 am

   If the IOC owns the copyrighted material, youtube doesn’t have a say in the matter.
   Cates Law Firm´s last blog ..Vaginal Mesh complications