18

December
2004

5:46 PM

pwning the olympics

Get this:

Darin Fair, owner of the The Beanery Coffee Company in Summerland, is raising money for Olympic hopeful freestyle skier Kristi Richards.

Fair labelled 5,000 bags of coffee with the name "Olympic Dreams". More than 20 stores have been selling the coffee – and $1.50 from each bag goes towards Richards' Olympic training costs.

Then Fair got a call from the 2010 Olympic Organizing Committee. He was told he's infringing the Olympic copyright.

That's from the CBC report. Fair isn't the first British Columbian to be pinned down by the all-seeing Eye of VANOC; up till now, their most visible move locally was to tell the owners of a fifteen year old pizza joint on Denman that they had to take down the rings and torch they've been using as signage all this time. There was a story in The Province on the ninth of November about this, it's gone now, of course, since CanWest has no clue how the web works, but here's Google's cached copy of the easy-on-the-eyes printer-ready version. It's not by any stretch the only or even the looniest run through the china shop on the part of the bulls of Vancouver's onliest Olympic Committee.

According to their own info sheet, the following are but a partial list of words, phrases, slogans, mottos, logos, symbols, numbers and combinations thereof which VANOC believes they have been enjoined to protect against the days when they can sell them for big money:

Olympics, Olympian, Olympiad, The Olympic Rings, The Olympic Torch, The Olympic Flame, The Olympic motto "Citius Altius Fortius", 2010, Vancouver 2010, Canada 2010, Whistler 2010, Vancouver Whistler 2010, 2010 Games, The Vancouver 2010 Bid Logo, Team Canada 2010, Winter Games, Countdown to 2010, Sea to Sky Games, Vancouver2010.com, SPIRIT OF 2010, Vancouver ’10

And, of course, "The official Emblem of the 2010 Winter Games (currently being designed)."

But that's not all: The listed items are examples only. As the sponsorship program is developed, new items will be added to the Olympic Brand. In other words, if VANOCites spot something good in a storefront display while out shopping, it is retroactively theirs, and the shopkeeper can just suck it up or face a nasty lawsuit. These guys do not know where to stop. They're on par with a dog barking itself into a conniption fit because someone's walking down the sidewalk on the far side of the street opposite the dog's back yard.

You know, I'm not hard-hearted. Much. I don't have a blessed thing against a person or entity making a living and protecting their own and so forth, but good lord 'n butter, VANOC's been chucking their weight around rather freely of late. Claiming to own exclusive control of 'Winter Games' is silly enough, but '2010'? VANOC, get a grip. You cannot own a number. It's just wrong. And another thing: relax. Of course local businesses are going to do their best to capitalize on the upcoming Olympic Spectacle (you missed that one) —it's called tourism, fer cryin' out loud, and was one of the strongest selling points for the province agreeing to underwrite this benighted extravaganza in the first place. These are efforts you are supposed to be supporting, not suppressing.

Take that coffee thing I opened with: Olympic Dreams, that's what's on the label that bright, public-spirited entrepreneurial Summerland brewer stuck on bags of specially blended coffee. (Summerland, for my international readers, is a tiny town near Penticton, on the banks of Okanagan Lake. Nice place.) Did he do it to get a piece of the 2010 Olympic Frenzy (another unaccountable ommission on the part of VANOC)? Um, no. It's a fundraiser for a local freestyle skier, to get her training time and plane fare and lunch money, on her way to entering the 2006 Winter Games in Torino. If she does well there, it doesn't need a rocket scientist to see she'd be a huge focal point of interest for BC sporting enthusiasts in 2010. This is the sort of thing VANOC ought to be labelling "godsend", and indeed, at least one of the committee members seems to understand that, as she gave the brewer a green light when he first talked about his project:

Fair said he got the blessing of Summerland's 2010 Winter Olympic committee and sold about 227 kilograms of coffee at 22 community locations. He also enlisted Sumac Ridge Estate Winery, which began selling wine with the label.

But then came word from 2010 officials – and even Premier Gordon Campbell himself – that the word "Olympic" had to go.

Someone be sure to let me know when, exactly, Gordie 'Martini' Campbell found time to pass the bar exam in business law. Then again, his advice might have something to do with VANOC's attempt to lay claim to the number '2010'.

Anyway, I'm with this Squamish guy:

We sincerely hope these are just growing pains for VANOC and not precursors of the Games to come. We also hope it's the last we hear about an attempt to help promote the Games and Canadian athletes getting sidetracked by copyright issues.

VANOC, 2010 will come and go. For the years till then, and all the years after, you still live here. Do please try to keep that in mind.

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