Nodar Kumaritashvili, 21 of Georgia, died during a training run Feb. 12, just hours before the Olympic opening ceremonies. Stephen Pate, publisher of the online site NJN Network, published the video along with commentary about the death, and the IOC has since ordered him in an email to take it down.

The email states the IOC owns the rights to all images of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, and only licensed broadcasters can use them. Pate said he won’t remove the video, because Canada’s Copyright Act allows the use of copyrighted material as part of a news story.

“One of the rights is for news organizations to report the news, so it’s a news story,” said Pate.

“The man died. Why did he die, was there negligence, what happened? And secondly, why is an international sports body trying to restrict the right of the public to see the story? And that made it a newsworthy item to write up.”

A spokesperson from the IOC told CBC News it had two main reasons for ordering that the luge video be taken down.

One is to protect the IOC’s exclusive rights and those of the official broadcasters. The other is the IOC feels it’s disrespectful to the Kumaritashvili family.

Within hours of the death of luge athlete Nodar Muaritashvili during a luge run at the Vancouver Olympics, the video was being posted on the Internet.

The tape clearly shows Muaritashvili losing control, flipping off his luge on the turn and flying up and off the track. It also shows him hitting an unprotected post, seemingly carelessly placed right in the path of anyone who loses it on that turn.

The IOC is now controlling news – it had the video taken down from YouTube and other Internet sites. The IOC claimed it was a copyright issue. However, in both Canada and the US, news stories are exempt from the permission rules of copyright under Fair Dealing and Fair Use.

That only makes sense. How can we report the news if someone could claim a fire at a factory should be banned because it showed their logo, or something they said. Copyright was meant to protect artists rights but not stifle freedom of the press.

The story was carried Friday on every major TV network with the footage. The IOC is flexing its fascist muscles again trying to show the world that the Olympics is more important than the law, human rights and almost any issue. As we said before, the IOC feels more and more like the new Catholic Church.

Story from TechDirt and Michael Geist

Olympics Using Bogus Copyright Claims To Take Down All Videos Of Fatal Luge Crash

As you probably heard today, just as reports warning about the luge track at the Olympics were coming out, a Georgian luger crashed and died while on a training run.

It’s a horrible situation all around, but it looks like the International Olympic Committee is trying to stifle the whole thing by using copyright claims to take down videos on YouTube, saying that only those who paid for broadcast rights can show the video.

Now, this could be part of a pre-arranged effort by the Olympics to try to stop any Olympics videos from hitting YouTube, but it shows the problem with such a blanket policy. In discussing news like this — no matter how horrific — it seems you could make a good case for fair use, but that’s not even being allowed here, as the videos are getting taken down very quickly.

And, even if the Olympic Committee thinks that it’s about “protecting” its copyright, it certainly feels like it’s trying to suppress the news of the crash and death.

This video clip is copyright by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). It was broadcast by ABC News, along with other broadcast media, both on broadcast TV, cable and on their internet site.  NJN Network makes no claim of copyright but it does claim the right to embed and thereby rebroadcast the video used under the Canadian Copyright Act under permission of Section 29.2 ” Fair dealing for the purpose of news reporting does not infringe copyright if the following are mentioned: (a) the source; and (b) if given in the source, the name of the…(iv) broadcaster, in the case of a communication signal.”

CBC News – Nodar Kumaritashvili, 21 of Georgia, died during a training run Feb. 12, just hours before the Olympic opening ceremonies. Stephen Pate, publisher of the online site NJN Network, published the video along with commentary about the death, and the IOC has since ordered him in an email to take it down.

The email states the IOC owns the rights to all images of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, and only licensed broadcasters can use them. Pate said he won’t remove the video, because Canada’s Copyright Act allows the use of copyrighted material as part of a news story.

“One of the rights is for news organizations to report the news, so it’s a news story,” said Pate.

“The man died. Why did he die, was there negligence, what happened? And secondly, why is an international sports body trying to restrict the right of the public to see the story? And that made it a newsworthy item to write up.”

A spokesperson from the IOC told CBC News it had two main reasons for ordering that the luge video be taken down.

One is to protect the IOC’s exclusive rights and those of the official broadcasters. The other is the IOC feels it’s disrespectful to the Kumaritashvili family.