Scott Goldblatt, a silver medalist in the pool in the 2000, sends an IM to say that if blogging is prohibited, no one told him. He's keeping his journal active. He wonders if this was an edict aimed only at the Canadian team.

Why this is news boggles me. During the last Olympics, participants were prohibited from posting any information to the web.

Ok, I have a real source of info for this rather than just a lame comment. See this article from /. from the 2000 Olympics

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/09/02/1541210&tid=153

The slashdot article links to a news article that is no longer found on the original site. However, archive.org has a copy of it here:

IOC Bans Athletes From Net Storytelling
http://web.archive.org/web/20001018100120/http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,18187,00.html

Before the 2000 Games, my employer was working with Quokka Sports and NBC (the US TV broadcast rights holder) to provide medal standings and results over WAP.

The IOC forbade NBC from launching the service as they had not bought the rights for WAP.

The IOC treats everything happening at the Games as their property and sells the broadcast rights to the high bidder. You could blog, as long as you bought the blogging rights from the IOC.

This gives the IOC committee members cushy salaries, but makes for crappy coverage of the games.

I've given up on the Games. The IOC is corrupt, and has been for a long time.

Dear David,

I was interested in seeing your post via boingboing.net as I plan to blog from the Games myself at:

http://www.racewalkingrecord.com/athens2004

I've studied the IOC rules for media at: http://multimedia.olympic.org/pdf/en_report_612.pdf

'These say 'The Internet is an important medium for the communication and promotion of sport and the Olympic Movement. The IOC embraces this medium as a platform for disseminating coverage of the Olympic Games.'

'The IOC understands that media organisations have integrated this medium in their business and
will be feeding their own websites with Olympic-themed content to target the online audience and
better serve fans during the upcoming Games of the XXVIII Olympiad, Athens 2004. However, the
IOC has an obligation to ensure that any use of the Internet to cover the Olympic Games is in
accordance with the Olympic Charter and in the best interests of the Olympic Movement as a
whole. Furthermore, the dissemination of moving images, including over the Internet, is covered by the IOC’s intellectual property rights, whose commercialisation to the licensed rights-holders of the Games of the XXVIII Olympiad, Athens 2004 provides the funding necessary to stage the Games and train athletes.'

It goes on at length, but it seems to suggest that blogging is OK withing certain limits in the description of the URL and gives sources for results, although moving images and audio are disallowed within the areas of the events - I intend to try to get round this last restriction with audio interviews outside the restricted zones.

For media the serious sanction available is to remove accrediation - though I expect they are unaware of blogging. For athletes I expect they could be thrown out of the Games, but this would be so petty compared to other reasons for possible exclusion and the controversy would be too great so I guess there's nothing much they can do to stop it and there will be lots of internet access there - though no Wi-Fi across the city.

I expect though that any actual ruling would be unique to each national Olympic Committee that I suppose 'employs' the athletes for the time they are at the Games - though that's a debates for another place.

Can't wait to get there and, if necessary, blog surrepticiously!

Tim

BoingBoing carries this item this morning:

Stuart Hughes, whose work you may know from some deeply personal accounts out of the Iraq war, is covering the Olympics via weblog. Stuart says, "I'm at the Olympics in Athens for the BBC but I'm giving the behind the scenes skinny you don't get from the news sites on my personal blog. This evening I've uploaded my first Olympic videoblog." [Boing Boing]

I guess there is a fine line between athlete and journalist. There's so many ways to start a free blog today that most athletes would have one. The media landscape is slowing changing.