[Infowarrior] - Olympics Can't Handle An Official Parody Twitter Account, So Twitter Takes It Down

[Richard Forno]

Olympics Can't Handle An Official Parody Twitter Account, So Twitter Takes It Down

from the the-official-department-of-the-2012-london-olympics dept

We've discussed a number of times how ridiculously over-aggressive the Olympics can be when it comes to anything close to an IP issue -- even to the point where it gets host cities to agree to pass exceptional IP laws that only apply to issues that the Olympics chooses. The Olympics are especially concerned with any non-sponsor brand even being seen. That means that non-sponsor brands, even if they're the brand of a toilet, will get "taped over." So you can guess at just how insanely over aggressive the Olympics can be to anyone who comes near its own marks. 

And that results in situations like the one where the London Olympics complained about a parody Twitter account, billed as the "official protesters of the London 2012 Olympic Games." This is obviously a joke. It's a parody on the fact that the Olympics seems to find an "official" sponsor of everything, so why not mock it using parody, which is widely seen as protected speech. But, not here.  Apparently after the Games complained to Twitter, Twitter suspended the entire account and said it needs to no longer rely on trademarks, like the Olympics' logo. 

Except, that defeats the whole purpose. How can you parody something when you're not even allowed to show what it is that you're parodying? Twitter is good on a bunch of issues, but on this one, it looks like it may have rushed ahead and shut down an account too quickly.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120524/03442719059/olympics-cant-handle-official-parody-twitter-account-so-twitter-takes-it-down.shtml

---
Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it.