Oh joy, another Olympics kerfuffle. Chicago's failed bid for the summer games was maddening enough. This time the USOC is going after Ravelry for the light-hearted and whimsical Ravelympics. See a Gawker article here and more info here on Ravelry. (Tip o' the hat to Tinks & Frogs, btw.)
Not only is law clerk Brett Hirsch’s phrasing poorly chosen and
condescending, I am pretty peeved by the cease-and-desist part of the
letter, too. As a classicist, I’m horrified by how the USOC tries
to protect a “brand” created by the Greeks in 776 B.C.E. The bit about
4-year intervals is especially addle-pated — hence the Greek system of dating by olympiads.
All in the name of profits, of course, while “amateurs” compete. I'm not a huge fan of the modern Olympics in general (esp. the summer games), and you can guarantee that I'll keep the TV off this summer.
7 comments:
Re the Olympics issue: Oh for heaven's sake. It'll be interesting to see what happens. Thanks for posting, I hadn't see this.
Ridiculous. Instead of having a sense of humor and realizing that Ravel*l*m*i*s encourages people to watch and support the games, the organizers have now sufficiently offended a large segment of the viewership enough that many of us will not bother to watch, much less support their franchise.
I love your Classical view. Indeed.
I don't find all those hours of sports to be interesting at all - give me the Tour de France any day. :)
this is laughable. I really do hope that they see a dip in the viewership this year. Howrude of them! I agree with you that it is rediculous that they are claiming ownerships of something that was started by the Greeks so so long ago.It's whatever, I dont even watch the games anyway, so I surly wont be watching them this year...
Well said!
I hadn't seen this, either. Thanks for sharing ... a kerfuffle, indeed.
Don't want to step on anyone's toes here - but this smells just like the Vatican admonishing its American nuns for spending too much time on social welfare issues. What???????
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