Olympics Branding Police Come To Britain

[Aaron MkII]

I'm surprised the IOC hasn't sued any business with variations of the word Olympic. AFAIK (going by fuzzy memory) that is what they did for the winter Calgary Olympic Games.

The VOC was all over people with "olympic" in the business name. Like Olympic Dry Cleaning. Threatening people who had printed off signs and shit for their windows, it was retarded.

[El Moose Monstero]

There's already been one story on UK news outlets about Cafe Olympic, which has been there for ages, somewhere in London, which was threatened with legal action if they didn't change the name. Rather than change the name, the owner simply took the 'O' off his sign.

I'm really hoping for something like an 'I'm spartacus' civil disobedience thing on this sort of shit, but I'm not holding my breath.

[Simon_Jester]

Also, regarding 'they won't be able to enforce it anyway' - this isn't really a good thing. One of the problems with highly controlled states is the selective enforcement of laws. When you have a lot of laws on the books that aren't being followed, it becomes easy for officials, police, etc to selectively enforce laws and thus become corrupt.

There's also the other side of the problem; the more laws are passed that are unenforceable or that people ignore, the more people can get into the habit of ignoring the law. People can develop an "eh, everyone does it" attitude towards breaking the law.

How much does this happen, outside of specific arenas? It seems to me that if you pass enough draconian laws, you're more likely to get selective enforcement creating an atmosphere of fear (they can always find an excuse to drag anyone away, and find them whenever they want) than an atmosphere of contempt.

It's only when the unenforceable laws aren't enforced that you get contempt for the law. Sporadic bursts of enforcement create fear and a chilling atmosphere among whatever class of people expect to be singled out for arbitrary punishment.

[Pendleton]

There's already been one story on UK news outlets about Cafe Olympic, which has been there for ages, somewhere in London, which was threatened with legal action if they didn't change the name. Rather than change the name, the owner simply took the 'O' off his sign.

The IOC has come out and said that they can't really enforce these limitations in this Internet age now. If everyone has a pocket sized computer with web access, as is the norm now, and a camera for video and photos, then what's to stop them other than random spot checks or cutting off the networks in the vicinity?

I'm really hoping for something like an 'I'm spartacus' civil disobedience thing on this sort of shit, but I'm not holding my breath.

And then the 1st annual Hunger Games begin. Much more bitching ensues.

[Irbis]

Eh, almost the same thing now happens in Poland/Ukraine, except it's UEFA doing it in preparation for 2012 European Football Championship and no one seems to care. Makes me a bit sad, really.