Security Madness
Jul. 14th, 2012 12:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kevin_standleeGood thing I'm not in the UK, as my use of the five-rings logo as a userpic would allow the police to enter my home and seize my property, it appears. So would linking to the London 2012 Olympics web site in a derogatory manner, as I'm doing right now.
See this post for links to articles on how the UK has passed special custom-written laws that effectively say that free speech doesn't apply to the Olympics, the London Olympic Committee can tell you what words you can use (not just trademarks), and how London is being turned into an armed camp for the duration.
My annoyance with this is not inconsistent with my role as chairman of WSFS's Mark Protection Committee, which tries to keep people from misusing "Worldcon," "Hugo Award," etc. WSFS doesn't care if you use those terms to refer to the actual convention or the awards presented by WSFS. Indeed, we like you doing so. We like it when cities consider it worthwhile to put up banners at the airport or on the streets welcoming our convention to town. We only get annoyed when conventions that aren't the World Science Fiction Convention describe themselves as "Worldcon" or when people give out awards that are confused with the Hugo Awards. (Both of these things have happened and continue to happen.) What the London Olympic Committee is doing is radically above and beyond simple trademark protection.
With luck, they won't decide that having the military occupying the city isn't a good long-term idea. If I lived in London, I would have been long since been trying to figure out how to be out of the city — preferably out of the country — for the games this summer. My sympathies go out to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
flickgc, drplokta, and my other friends who live in around London, who it appears may be prisoners in their own homes for a month or so this year.
See this post for links to articles on how the UK has passed special custom-written laws that effectively say that free speech doesn't apply to the Olympics, the London Olympic Committee can tell you what words you can use (not just trademarks), and how London is being turned into an armed camp for the duration.
My annoyance with this is not inconsistent with my role as chairman of WSFS's Mark Protection Committee, which tries to keep people from misusing "Worldcon," "Hugo Award," etc. WSFS doesn't care if you use those terms to refer to the actual convention or the awards presented by WSFS. Indeed, we like you doing so. We like it when cities consider it worthwhile to put up banners at the airport or on the streets welcoming our convention to town. We only get annoyed when conventions that aren't the World Science Fiction Convention describe themselves as "Worldcon" or when people give out awards that are confused with the Hugo Awards. (Both of these things have happened and continue to happen.) What the London Olympic Committee is doing is radically above and beyond simple trademark protection.
With luck, they won't decide that having the military occupying the city isn't a good long-term idea. If I lived in London, I would have been long since been trying to figure out how to be out of the city — preferably out of the country — for the games this summer. My sympathies go out to
flickgc, drplokta, and my other friends who live in around London, who it appears may be prisoners in their own homes for a month or so this year.
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no subject
Date: 2012-07-14 09:15 pm (UTC)London had a "ring of steel" for years, with every car being investigated and many cars searched every day, due to the IRA bombing campaign, and I had my car stopped and occasionally searched when driving near Canary Wharf several times in the mid-2000's.
All vehicles entering and leaving London (or parked on the streets) have their number plates scanned and recorded.
You learn to live with Big Brother when it seems to be a useful way of reducing the chance of dying in a terrorist bombing ...
US Olympics had big security operations, military, surface to air missiles etc.
Oh, and Cardiff is the home of the Millenium Stadium, where I believe some of the Olympic football (soccer) matches will be played ... so not far enough away to avoid the "London" Olympics :-)