to think the Olympics have no right to ban the words "summer" and "London"?!!

[motherofallhangovers]

"Olympics organisers have warned businesses that during London 2012 their advertising should not include a list of banned words, including "gold", "silver" and "bronze", "summer", "sponsors" and "London"." source.

And they're actually going to police this!

"Almost 300 enforcement officers will be seen across the country checking firms to ensure they are not ... illegally associating themselves with the Games"

WTF?! I feel like I've just wandered onto the set of the satire "Twenty-twelve", it's so farcical.

But no, this is real!

tooting I can stand in the Olympic lane nr Kings Cross on Monday week after work, meet you there

And this is part of the reason that once I knew the Olympic dates I immediately booked a vacation, on another continent, for the entire thing. I find it hard to get excited about corporate greed and frankly I would probably get so incensed that I'd be arrested after blocking one of the bloody Olympic 'VIP' lanes, tactically timing it so the Olympic Committee didn't get to see the 100m final...

oh FFS. So they can't organise a piss up in a brewery when it comes to security, but they can manage to sort out an elite force of bullies to harass perfectly decent Brownie troops and little old ladies?

Fair enough to stop rival big businesses fibbing about links to the Olympics, but this is ridiculous. And they are wasting more taxpayer's money doing it, if they are using public-sector workers such as Trading Standards.

So much for sporting ethos - it's clearly about big business and multi-million pound deals and sod ordinary people. Especially as the Olympics have swallowed up Lottery money that should have gone to community sports, meaning some groups and facilities are acually closing down - so the Olympic shenanigans are actually harming sporting activity, not boosting it.

Was already grumpy about them as I commute into London and it's going to make my life hell - yeah, right, I can follow the official advice to 'avoid' my mainline station between 7 am and 10 am and between 4pm and 7pm, and the same for my tube journey, because my employer doesn't actually expect me to turn up for more than a couple of hours a day and I don't need to get home and pick my son up or anything. In fact, I have work deadlines that can't be shifted and an inflexible employer that won't allow working from home at all and won't even allow adjusted hours until we've all tried to get in and 'seen how it works'.

Ooh,just thought,one of the teacher's Dh's at school hand crafted some Olympic rings to hang on the sports field fence.No doubt the word police will be trudging across a muddy field to demand their removal.After all,someone might easily mistake a small village primary school for an Olympic stadium.

our school has had a "X School Olypmics" as a sports day title for the past few years - thankfully it was back in June, so no danger of the purple people turning up to close it down.

perhaps we could barricade said village schools/pub gardens/playing fields with the contraband cushions to keep the purple police at bay.

But this will be interesting - is the Duchess of Cambridge's family is in trouble for copyright.....

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2175703/Pippa-Middletons-family-firm-breach-strict-Olympic-advertising-laws-new-products.html

Oh,just thought,every horse show we've been to recently has had at least 3 competitors in the fancy dress competition dressed as the Olympics,torches rings and all.Perhaps they'll have to start impounding small ponies too.

I'm waiting for them to arrest me for my name change...

ohlimppricks, that's a good 'un.

Shall we start a fund for MN?

Why does the link in the OP redirect through some weird site called scripts.affiliatefuture.com?

Are you trying to make money off us OP?

Even Amazon is using : Summer of Sport. Shop Now.

It is daft.
Whether or not they say olympics won't affect whether or not I shop at Amazon.
The nectar points on the other hand.....

I know they have to protect copyright words (I still can't get my head round the fact that they could possibly own copyright to Olympiad or Olympic, given that these concepts have been around for a few millennia...) because if you don't chase up each and every copyright infringement, other parties can use those infringements to justify their own rip-offs - as a precedent. But surely this is being taken well beyond the bounds of common sense? Ravelry (huge and benign knitting website and forum) had to rebrand their 'Ravelmpics' challenge (knitting feats undertaken while the games are on) because apparently the Olympic Committees even own copyright to 'mpics'. And what's happening with Greenwich Royal Park is just appalling.

I'm getting quite frothy about the whole bloody malarkey these days.

Well this tattoo artist might have got away with it.
Oh dear.
Some people just can't spell

That's given me an idea. We could do what French Connection did with their FCUK logo and go round in Tshirts with Ylompics on them. Very subversive.

I like Ylompics

I thought they sold the whole Olympic thing to us as being so great for the country and bringing all this potential business and money in. But only if you are a big sponser it would seem (who, if they can afford to sponsor to the tune of 700 million, obviously dont need a few extra pounds)
MIL has a holiday cottage, would be great to promote it as somewhere good to stay as near a mainline station where you can reach the games easily. But a small business like her cannot tell anyone that.
How are small businesses supposed to be benefitting from the games if we arent allowed to make any reference to them, to take advantage of this 'once in a lifetime' opportunity.
the more I hear the more ridiculous it is.

Hee hee. We have posters in our school hall where the children have incorporated the Olympic rings and the 2012 logo into their designs! So sue me.

great article here

I particularly like:

Meanwhile, The Daily Mail, whose unofficial motto appears to be ?What Fresh Hell Is This?? has published articles noting that hundreds of thousands of tickets are still unsold, that no one wants to watch women play soccer and that some of the paths for the mountain bike competition will not be finished in time. ?Security Shambles Could Cause Chaos for Spectators,? the paper said this week, next to an article with the headline ?London?s Transport System Fails Again.?

The various bits of legislation (sources - the actual legistlation, not the Gruaniad's interpretation of it) make it clear that the restrictions only apply to any kind of contractual or commercial relationship, or corporate or structural connection, between a person, product or service and the Olympic Games or Olympic Movement. I therefore find it hard to believe that a primary school running an Olympic themed sports day will be committing an offence. Note also that there is a burden of proof on LOCOG to prove there has been an "association" - it is not "implied" by the mere presence of the words. So I'd say that Primary schools and brownies getting "cease and desist" letters should stick two fingers up at LOCOG and Olympic-away, as the chances of them getting prosecuted are nil. But Pepsi and Burger King should know better.

(Note; these restrictions are applicable to every Olympic Games, not just London. They exist primarily in the Olympic Symbol etc. (Protection) Act 1995 as amended by the London Olympic Games and Paralympics Act 2006 The restrictions are expanded and tailored for each Games as required.... so, for example, "Rio 2016" will be an offence for the next Olympics; the use of the Olympic rings is an offence all the time. So if you're going to blame a government, please blame the right one. This time it's John Major and Tony Blair at fault )

From TheEternalOptimist's New York Times article: ?That?s why you don?t see any references to the Games in shop windows or on the streets ? people are too scared,? she said.

The media is causing this to a large extent. People hear of brownie packs getting threatening letters and so daren't put a handdrawn Olympics Special Offer poster in their shop window. It's crazy and totally disproportionate.

I agree with WhatWillSantaBring, they should stick two fingers up, or at least wait until they get a cease and desist letter before they worry about it. I'm not the most courageous of people but I would do it.

Quenelle/Whatwill
The problem is though that there are people being frightened by these stories, and they are not only caused by the media - Frasermummy told of a Brownie pack who were warned not to use Olympic imagery.

And why should a baker not arrange his bagels in the Olympic Rings style during the Olympics - it is fun and not harming anyone. I am not going to think, "oh, I WAS going to go to Mcdonalds, but after seeing that, I will have a bagel cause they must be sponsoring the Olympics too".

I do see that they have to protect their intellectual property, but there is no room for common sense here.

I do agree with you Optimist. They are not doing any harm at all and the Act has been wrongly enforced in those cases.

I'm saying I don't think the answer is to quietly capitulate. I'm not in a position to capitalise in any way but I would love to see those who are just going ahead and doing what they are entitled to do and challenging any threats or warnings they get. Perhaps they would have to cease and desist eventually but it would be fantastic if a few people questioned its disproportionality and made the purple people and LOCOG answer publicly to it. Even if they just got Shami Chakrabarti onto them or wrote an open letter to Lord Coe or something...

I am desperately trying to think of a way that I can use all the banned words in an advert that implies that I am connected with the event.

I would love a cease and desist letter.