back to article El Reg sparks international incident with Olympics committee

El Reg has sparked an international crisis of gun-boat proportions. Seems we've raised the hackles of the US Olympic Commission in our article, Cisco mobilizes US Olympics audience. Our piece quoted from an early Cisco Systems' press release draft that stated the company's Flip video cameras would be passed out to athletes at …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Olympic Response

    How dare The Register be flippant about the IOC circus! Not handling sponsor interests with velvet gloves (lined with only the softest of unicorn fur) could lead to all those brown envelopes being undelivered, and where would the circus be then?!

  2. irish donkey
    Unhappy

    I take they aren't offering.......

    any free tickets or camera's then?

    Shame...........

  3. bertie bassett
    FAIL

    Frikking olympics

    Some of the athlete blogs leading upto 2008 were fantastic, a real behind the scenes look at what goes on in the mind of an olympic athlete. Then come the start of the games not a bean - not cos the athlete was more focused on performing but they weren't allowed to blog, and then post olympics a restriction on what they could talk about / post photos off..

    And we thought wacky jacqui wanted a police state - no thats the IOC

  4. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Flame

    Reparations: it's the only think keeping America afloat these days

    >>They took the issue to Cisco, who rang us seeking reparation.

    Yeah. I also wanted to ring Cisco to seek reparation for their ... frankly bizarre ... gear earlier last year, but seeing that I wouldn't get nowhere, I let it be.

    >>to capture their own "gold, silver, and bronze metal moments."

    I would pay for that. It would be like jackass, in olympic proportions.

  5. Trevor Pott o_O Gold badge
    Pint

    Tone

    Given the "tone" of most articles with AT&T in them, I am utterly astonished they don't freak out more often.

    (I'd say "thank $deity that AT&T don't run major networks in my neck of the woods," however Canada's carriers are horrific in their own right. "A free and unregulated market drives competition" my ASCII.)

    Stick it to 'em, I say! Keep the tone of the articles just as they are, and let the hounds bay at the door if they must.

  6. theSensibleGeek

    Wrong Target?

    Seems to me if your piece was quoting Cisco, that Cisco should sort their own shit out before they come crying to El Reg...

    Word to the wise, Cisco: If you don't want to be quoted, keep your mouth shut.

  7. ElNumbre
    Black Helicopters

    Ohh Crap...

    They'll be after me for my comments on the 2012 Summer Olympics Logo and how it looks like a cartoon of something else (not that it does now of course - its an excellent logo which represents London, the Olympics, the IOC, Steve Jobs, Kim Jong Ill and everyone else (ever) in a favourable light).

    Wait, is that some black helicopters I hear???

    1. John G Imrie
      Big Brother

      Room 101

      rightwise thinking double plus good

    2. lpopman
      Thumb Up

      titular appendage

      I much preferred the goatse style 2012 logo that even got as far as the BBC ;)

  8. 7mark7

    So the USOC ...

    ... will be farting dust in London with all the CCTV.

    1. blackworx
      Coffee/keyboard

      Farting dust

      Splutter. And I had 4 sugars in mine this morning.

      1. Intractable Potsherd
        Happy

        Farting dust...

        .... Brilliant, just brilliant!

  9. Tom Maddox Silver badge
    Paris Hilton

    Flipping out

    The local subway system is plastered with Flip ads which give the impression that the Flip is targeted at the young, vain, and stupid. So, um, I can only guess that it will be massively successful. If only Cisco had colored it white and called it the iFlip, they would have had an absolute slam dunk.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Good on El Reg

    I've enjoyed this site for ages and ages! Your articles have a great mix of anarchic humour and great technical insight. It's been really fascinating seeing El Rego move from a 'corner of the net' to an important site people do make time to read.

    FOTW's seem to be getting better and better (I'll not mention the Country FOTW's seem to usually inflame, but I can see a pattern forming...!)

    I do NOT want this post to sounds like a BBC Radio2 "Hi Steve, Love the show" (don't get me started on that fucker), but I just wanted to say to all El Reg team at the start of a new decade, Keep biting that hand folks! So many of us really appreciate your take on the buis, and it makes us smile. I'm smiling more now that supposed 'big players' are taking note of you too.

    Thank You, and have a good 'Terrible Teens' !!

  11. Skrrp
    Thumb Up

    Like I said before

    El Reg, if you're pissing people off, you're doing your job properly.

    That article was priceless.

    1. Jimbo 6
      Paris Hilton

      "squat and receive an HD Olympics video enema"

      Reg articles frequently make me laugh, but rarely do they bring actual tears to my eyes. Quality.

      (Paris, cos she also likes things that bring tears to her eyes)

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Bul****t

    "...official Olympic rules dictate that athletes are only allowed to have video cameras outside of specific areas"

    "...holding a camera to your face while zooming 90MPH down the ski slopes would not only be a most grievous violation of Olympic regulations..."

    "...one that has infuriated the US Olympic Committee who complained to their US broadcast sponsor NBC."

    I don't think they give a rat's ass what happens to the athletes. They just don't want the athletes to sell their own pics or video.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    You know when you've been ...

    The only memorable (non) Olympic sponsor that I can actually remember are due to the posters decorating English railway stations that used to display something like "Tango - officially a drink during the 19xx Olympics". I used to chuckle every time I saw one. I dislike the drink but the marketing was pure genius made doubly delicious by wondering how many real sponsors of the over-inflated event were hacked off by it. Brilliant stuff.

  14. The Mighty Spang
    WTF?

    bit uppity for something so shit

    monumental waste of money and creator of immense amounts of waste, the olympics. look at whats happening in london, fucking shocking.

    also what is it with the olympics, seriously all that money to watch people run in circles for 2 weeks. most events are so eye wateringly tedious and pointless. noboy in their right minds goes to watch 90% of the sports on display most of the time anyway.

    and why is football in there? isnt there a thing called the world cup?

    1. Paul 4

      Winter olympics

      The summer olympics is people runing in circles for 2 weeks. The winter olympics is 2 weeks of crashtastic painful fun.

  15. Rob 5
    Black Helicopters

    @ ElNumbre

    Message from the IOC:

    All your 2012 are belong to us.

  16. Winkypop Silver badge
    FAIL

    Ahh that would be....

    ....the International Olympic Committee....as corrupt as a prawn left to rot in the sun.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Does this mean...

    ...that The Register will be losing its Olympic accreditation? I only ask because ever since the first summer games I have relied on The Register's sterling coverage and insightful analysis of the events and the general Olympic milieu.

    The Register may no longer be the respected broadsheet it once was, but I cannot imagine an Olympic event unheralded by the firm, authoritative, and strangely arousing voice of The Regsiter's acclaimed sports journalism team.

    Yes, I am on something. Lets move along from that, shall we?

  18. Big-nosed Pengie
    Thumb Up

    Well done.

    El Reg is doing its job.

  19. Andus McCoatThen
    Coat

    Its the American Way

    Always shoot the messenger, never the one that issued the bollixed press release in the first place. Big companies like Cisco and AT&T can't be arsed to fact-check every bit of drek their marketing wonks come out with, it is easier and cheaper to just vilify / act indignant toward anyone (usually the press) that happens onto their bit of stupidity.

    Extra points to the stick-in-the-arse crowd of the IOC for building the mountain that the skiers will apparently be filming themselves racing down... Now, if the cameras were connected to their AT&T Iphones, would the public get to see this footage?

    Probably not... The signal would be less reliable than an AT&T call in New York.

    Mines the one with the laptop-tethered Tmobile iphone in the pocket.

  20. Jedi Name Germinator

    AT&T won't...

    .. be handling any network traffic; As they are an American company and the Olympics are held in Canada.

  21. Long Fei
    FAIL

    Strict

    I was working here in China for a franchise, the main office of which was an Olympic sponsor of the 08 games.

    Before the Olympics we had a bunch of *very8 stern warnings that franchises couldn't use the Olympic logo in promotions, unless they paid a frankly stupid amount of money to HO.

    Needles to say, this being China, those emails were ignored. Lol.

  22. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    Olympics are dead to me

    Olympics are dead to me, and most of my friends. No streaming permitted, not even simulcast of what's on TV. No photos. No video. No blogging. As far as we are all concerned, they are not online so they do not exist. Last time I tried to watch coverage on TV, it was painful. PAINFUL. Coverage was split up between seemingly unrelated channels (I think all were owned by NBC..), so I'd find out some event was not even on a channel I could get. It was VERY US-Centric, to the point that they'd show some guy finishing like 9th place but not show the actual winners. And worst of all, they'd spend so long on these life stories (they ALWAYS "rise up from adversity") that they'd skip covering some events at all. And worst of all, was knowing how good coverage COULD have been if they could have just put videos on a web site. When NBC *did* attempt this they tried it with silverlight so it was absolutely useless.

    The general attitude of the olympic committee seems very ugly too... didn't they shut down all local food and drink vendors at an olympics a few years back, because they had "official" ones? (So people wanted to get authentic local food and could find like hotdogs and cola instead.) Here in the states, stations will carefully refer to it as "the games" or (in this case) "games in london" or "London games" -- the Olympics will try to charge stations just for sayling the word "olympics" if they aren't the official station!

  23. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge
    Thumb Up

    El Reg is the best

    Love the way El Reg gets under the skin of everybody :)

    Keep it up, that's a good one :)

  24. Ivan Slavkov

    How silly of the Register

    When you do an article about Olympic sponsorship you have to come to me ya know. We sort things out. For a small fee. A bigger fee and athletes will have cameras up their bottoms. And a special fee for me and it may happen in London.

    1. Fred Flintstone Gold badge
      Joke

      Don't travel on the same plane as me then

      I have this thing against bottom loaders.. On the other hand, it would put a whole new meaning to "Intel inside"..

  25. Dazed and Confused

    So do tell me, what was that effect again?

    Making complaint about things like this just makes more people look, isn't that what Barbara found?

    PS

    >>They took the issue to Cisco, who rang us seeking reparation.

    Jeez, only a American Corp Lawyer could threaten to sue for you quoting one of their own press releases. This has to go down as an all time head up a?$! moments

  26. SuperTim

    You B*stards

    How could you? I was literally choking back tears because of your suggestion that some olympians may actually record something of interest. As you have clarified the position of Cisco now though, my tears are turning to warm fuzzy comfortable feelings in the knowledge that all we will now see is some olympians dicking about in the snow and having a laugh.

    Phew!

  27. John Doe 1
    Coat

    Ah, nice to see that...

    ...a sense of humour isn't lost on the USOC or AT&T. Oh, wait...

  28. -tim
    Coat

    They must control everything

    My family's shop was selling olympics [Not TM!] souvenirs back in 1904 and they even got permission.

    /mines the one with the pockets full of counterfeit Olympics souvenirs and the boot leg VHS tapes of "The Games"

  29. Sir Runcible Spoon
    Thumb Up

    Sir

    They obviously don't understand British humour, or the perils of provoking the pidgeon^H^H^H^H^H^ vulture.

    Open season on the IOC then is it? I can't wait.

  30. Tim Roberts 1
    Megaphone

    effing olympics !

    there have been very few olympic (actually have there been any?) games in the recent past that have been cost neutral - let alone turned a profit. Each medal costs millions and to what end? Bloody waste of time and money imho.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Go

      Olympic profits

      Apparently a handful of them made a profit: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090327134947AASNOCi

  31. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    Tone?

    have the USOC heard of the First Amendment guaranteeing Freedom of the Press? Or is it superseded by broadcasting and sponsorship deals? I don't like the tone of the USOC or IOC - on anything!!

  32. Fred Flintstone Gold badge
    Thumb Up

    El Reg, my compliments

    Pissing off the IOC - you guys deserve your own medal for that.

    Oh, wait..

  33. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Numpties

    What a bunch of.

  34. Anonymous Coward
    Dead Vulture

    Gold, silver, and bronze are indeed metals

    in fact, without too much running about, I can lay my hands on samples of all three without having to leave the comfort of my own home, let alone pissing a few billion quid up the wall.

    Getting my hands on meDals, however, is a somewhat trickier proposition...

  35. The BigYin

    Headcams

    Make them all wear headcams so the audience really can "be" with the athletes.

    Hmm...not such a bad idea really, if you give two shits about the Olympics and I don't. Complete waste of money for a second-rate country like the UK. We can't even keep roads open FFS.

    Snow and ice? What're they? It's not like we get them every year. Oh, wait....

  36. Andrew Newstead

    two can play...

    Don't the IOC, AT & T and Cisco realise how this may backfire?

    What if I decided to not take an interest in the games (not difficult in my case, no motorbike racing), not buy the sponsers products (cos I don't like Fanta or Coke), not use AT & T (I'm in England anyway) or not use Cisco products?

    In otherwords, they are not important enough to me!

    I'm sure I'm not alone. Unfortunately there are lots of other people out there who don't think this way and that confers a level of importance that allows these entities to throw their weight around if they think they are being slighted.

    Anyway Reg, keep up the good work because I like seeing apologies that end up saying "sorry, but you're still all wankers anyway".

  37. Pete 2 Silver badge

    And you thought the olympics was about sports ...

    Well that told you!

    It's interesting to look at the companies who are throwing their dosh at the olympics. The likes of C**a C**a, Mc******ds and a load of tech / car / comms companies. Makes you wonder what (if anything) these organisations have to do with health, athleticism, or fitness.

    Maybe they regard their sponsorship deals as a sort of contrition for their products, and aren't particularly pleased when people point out some inconvenient facts that get between them and their "goodness" by association?

  38. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Ah...

    There were days when the Olympics weren't a huge hyped up commercial business and

    instead focused on its original intentions, sports.

    Now it's just a huge show of some people moving around, flashing huge corporate logos in an

    even larger sea of corporate logos

    Those were the days...

  39. Chewy

    I hope

    ...that you referred them to Arkle vs Presdram? Might take them a while to figure it out.

  40. VulcanV5
    Dead Vulture

    A Response On Behalf of The International Olympic Committee. (Draft.)

    Hopefully El Reg will have learnt a lesson from this.

    It's one thing to have a pop at corrupt sleaze-ridden self-serving enterprises peopled by power-crazed egotists as loathsome as they are venal, quite another to make The Olympics a butt of juvenile humour.

    In truth, The Olympics represents all that's best about the human spirit and the capacity to prevail -- the "triumph of the will", as that notable historian Leni Riefenstahl so aptly put it in 1936.

    The celebration of individual worth, the recognition of individual merit: though these may be principles all too readily mocked by El Reg's adolescent journalists, the Olympics movement has time and time again shown the benefits that accrue when such are courageously upheld.

    Consider, for example, Juan Antonio Samaranch, the honourable friend of the even more honourable General Franco.

    At a time when Spain was still locking up thousands of impoverished delusional citizens who believed Franco was a mass murderer and Fascism an intolerable evil, the Olympian spirit asserted itself and Samaranch, a humble rich man, progressed from being Franco's Secretary for Sport to the presidency of the International Olympic Committee itself.

    Insisting, quite rightly, that he be now addressed as "His Excellency", rather than "that Juan over there", Senor Samaranch also, quite rightly, insisted that when travelling the world on Olympics business he stay in the finest hotel suites and be chauffered in the most expensive limousines. . .

    . . . And that when he wasn't globe-trotting at others' expense, the IOC pay half a million dollars a year to maintain a presidential suite for him in a Swiss hotel within limousine distance of IOC HQ (a tidy sum, in total, seeing as how His Eternally Majestic Excellency was IOC President for 21 years.)

    Talk about the transformational power of the Olympic dream! It doesn't -- it cannot -- get more noble than that.

    Yet here we are in the UK, saddled with El Reg (which in view of its name, really ought to be mindful of its Iberian provenance) and its immature sniping at a global force for good that only two years from now will place a banana republic that hasn't even got a banana at the centre of the world stage.

    Does El Reg not care about the damage it is doing to the London Olympics of 2012?

    Does it not appreciate that at a time when the health of our nation (and especially, its young people) has never been at greater risk, the Olympics represents a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate the life-affirming spirit of athletic endeavour?

    Can it not begin to comprehend that were other media to follow the example of El Reg's reportage, this might ultimately lead to the withdrawal of the major sponsors of the London Olympics?

    And then what will happen?

    Where is London 2012 going to find multi-national corporations as selfless and as dedicated to the notion of health and fitness as McDonald's and Coca-Cola? Where is London 2012 going to be without sponsorship by Cadbury's? Commercial outfits as responsible as those three are few and far between.

    And if they do pull out, what then the misery inflicted on a bankrupt populace desperate to embrace the Olympian ethos by watching the Games unfold on their plasma TVs whilst downing half-litre cups of Coca Cola and holding a bar of chocolate in one hand and a Big Mac in the other?

    Are they to be denied these simple pleasures? These foundations for a better, brighter, healthier future?

    No, El Reg. No.

    It's time to grow up and start being responsible. The Olympic Games, the Olympic movement, the various Olympic Committees worldwide and the IOC itself: all have made, and continue to make, a contribution that -- as the record shows -- is utterly. . . unique.

    Little wonder that companies as sensitive to their corporate image as AT&T and Cisco strive so vigorously to be associated with that contribution, knowing as they do that the opinions entertained by an enraptured public towards all things Olympian must inevitably rub off on them.

    As, of course, is now the case.

  41. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    I think we are missing the main issue here,...

    "HD TV Enema" - is there a new interface in the offering for this product? Are they trying to attract any particular audience perhaps?

  42. Big Bear

    @VulcanV5

    Who is more corrupt? The UK Government or the IOC?

    Discuss.

  43. VulcanV5
    Flame

    @ Big Bear

    Corruption is a tawdry allegation levelled at many a respectable organisation, be it British Telecom, Her Majesty's Government, or the International Olympic Committee and its global siblings.

    BT was accused of all manner of evil things where Phorm Inc was concerned, yet its inadvertently unauthorised wire-tapping of UK subscribers was merely a test to see if customers' phone lines were working.

    As for the present UK Government, no criticism is sustainable when the facts are held up to scrutiny -- a classic example being Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction, the eradication of which was very much in our national interest.

    Are there any WMDs in Iraq today? Of course there aren't. London is no longer within 20 minutes of an Iraqi chemical-nuclear strike, this being a necessary qualification for hosting the 2012 Olympics and making the world a better place for McDonald's and Coca Cola.

    And though even Parliament itself has been accused of corruption, the facts say otherwise. When on June 18 last year, MPs' expenses were finally published, the reason why so many details were blanked out (such as all the addresses of every 'flipped' second home) was to save on ink and paper.

    And what's wrong with that, then?

    Hard working British families everywhere (as the great Mr Brown says 100 times every day) understand that in a recession -- caused not by a prudent UK Government but by amoral self-servers in charge of Britain's major banks -- every penny saved is a penny that can be sent to a Saudi Prince on BAE's Christmas card list.

    Come to think of it, even the ordure heaped on Britain's bankers has proved misplaced. One has only to look at Sir Tom McKillop, former Chairman of Royal Bank of Scotland and chief cheer-leader for financial genius Sir Fred Goodwin. Between them, they were responsible for losing £60 billion and necessitating a rescue operation costing each and every UK taxpayer £1,000 apiece.

    But did that make the board of Shell think twice about Sir Tom's directorship? Of course it didn't. Months after RBS crashed and Sir Fred went away to spend more time with his family, Shell publicly proposed that Sir Tom -- on Shell's board since 2004 -- be re-appointed at the company's April 16 2009 AGM.

    Thus was demonstrated by one of the world's biggest companies that it isn't amorality or corruption that hallmarks life at the top but a fervent commitment to the old-fashioned values of loyalty and decency towards others.

    So I do wish words like 'corrupt' would not be bandied about in view of the damage they inflict on individuals and entities of the highest repute. (As every starving duck knows, the world was a better place for the likes of Conservative MP Sir Peter Viggers, forced to step down at the next General Election simply because he -- like so many of his ilk -- are only too well aware of the needs and aspirations of pond life in all its forms.)

    Let's not talk then about 'corruption' ever again.

    Britain and its Government, its institutions and its major companies exemplify all that which has led our nation to where it is today, and quite properly made our glorious capital city the most appropriate venue of them all for the Olympic Games of 2012.

    El Reg, take note.

    1. Fred Flintstone Gold badge
      Thumb Up

      What an *excellent* start to the new year

      VuncanV5, you're giving Mandelson a run for his money (actually, it's probably someone else's money anyway, but I digress)..

      I hope to read much more - any topic, any day.

      :-)

  44. Mike Moyle
    Grenade

    You missed a chance...

    "...all the video data traffic flooding in would cause the telecom to "squat and receive an HD Olympics video enema" even though AT&T has admitted in the past to challenges handling 3G traffic on its network.

    "We're not updating that one, we just thought it was sort of funny because it showed how serious the business of Olympic-level sponsorship is."

    Clearly, you should now be PUBLICIZING the fact that AT&T can handle ALL of the video, etc. that people want to push through its pipes -- Their friends at the USOC said that it was alright!

  45. AJames

    Wrong country, guys

    AT&T is the official sponsor of the U.S. Olympic Team, but they have no wireless facilities in CANADA, where the Olympics are taking place. Video flooding there may well be, but if so it will be on the local networks of Telus, Rogers, or Bell Canada.

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