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IOC trying to suppress luge fatality video
February 22, 2010 - 12:06pm
Below...
IOC orders blogger to remove video
CBC covers David and Goliath battle with IOC
Where's M. Spector?
I have noticed that the IOC has been scrubbing YouTube diligently -- I assumed for reasons of copyright, which I think is stupid in their case but predictable. But NJN should have a case imho. Who is a "news organization" anyway? (And do we want the IOC defining that?) That raises the further question of what YouTube is ...
If anyone wants to see the video before it disappears entirely (i.e. if the IOC succeeds), they can view it here.
You can also download it for posterity, but you'll need some such free utility as Orbit Downloader (if you're an unfortunate Windoze uzer like me...).
Youtube is a site for amateur videos.
The only thing the blogger can do is to have as many people as possible host the video on the private sites and the IOC will never be able to track them all.
Plus people will lose interest quickly enough once it's gone from Google-owned Youtube.
The blogger (Stephen Pate) has the video up on his own site - http://njnnetwork.ca - it's not linked from Youtube. And if we and other people link to his site enough, it will rank high up on Google. So go for it, folks! Incidentally, rabble.ca tends to rank very high in Google searches, so just mentioning it here a few times ought to do the trick also.
I'm not understanding either side of this. Why do we need to be able to access this video? Why is the IOC trying to suppress it? No one is denying what happened. Do we need to see the video to understand the gravity of the event?
I didn't open this thread because of the original event. I find it to be one of a million unfortunate events that happen all the time, and not really all that important in the scheme of things. I do, however, find it interesting that the IOC claims ownership of all images related to the games, as well as sympathy for the family's feelings, as its reason to threaten people who wish to host the video. There are lots of implications for freedom of speech and of the press, which is why I opened the discussion in the Media forum.
In short, as for the "gravity of the event", I don't share that view. But when you say "why do we need to be able to access this video", I would hope you would not ask the same question about some not-very-well-written book that some government bans, or some amateurish song or poem, or a movie. It's not about "need" - it's about "right".
Fair enough, the ability for one party to come in and say that you can't provide this information or that seems pretty scary. I wouldn't care to fight that battle over this particular video but I could understand the argument that letting them do so in one instance gives them more room to do so in the future.
I think it's relevant if there is a question about the safety of the track. I don't like that the IOC can ask for it's removal partially out of respect for the family and yet blame the accident entirely on the athlete. I think having access to the footage is just as necessary as when people review video footage of taser victims when the question of culpability exists.