Olympic Committee Bans Wi-Fi Hotspots
Leave your 3G dongle at home.
London may have just gotten itself some pretty significant WiFi coverage, but it looks like it's not all sunshine and connectivity inside the Olympic venues. The International Olympic Committee has revealed that mobile hotspots are banned from this year's Olympics. While you are permitted to use a your smartphone or tablet inside the venues, personal or private access points, along with 3G hubs, are not allowed.
TechCrunch reports that the news follows hot on the heels of the announcement that Londonders (or indeed anyone else attending the games, won't be able to share photos or videos of their experiences on social networks. According to the site, any ticket holder with images, video, and sound recordings of the Games cannot use the content for anything other than private and domestic purposes. This extends to licensing, broadcasting, or publishing the content either via social networking sites, or the internet in general. Yikes.
Along with your own personal WiFi hotspot or 3G hub, you also won't be allowed to carry liquids, aerosols, or gels in quantities greater than 100ml; alcohol; tents, placards, spray paint; walkie-talkies, phone jammers or radio scanners; laser pointers or strobe lights; any item too large to be electronically screened; bikes; pets or other animals; any type of blade, knife or offensive weapons including blades and personal protection sprays; firearms; fireworks/explosives of any kind; controlled drugs; or items that resemble prohibited items such as gun replicas.
London 2012 also has a list of restricted items to go along with its restricted items. This includes any objects or clothing bearing political statements or "overt commercial identification intended for 'ambush marketing'" as well as large flags; over-sized hats; golf umbrellas; large photographic equipment measuring over 30cm; excessive amounts of food; balls, rackets, frisbees or other projectiles; noisemakers, such as air horns, whistles, klaxons and vuvuzelas; or flags of countries not participating in the Games (excluding the flags of nations under the umbrella of a participating country).
While it would likely be fairly easy to prevent people from bringing a lot of the above into the venues, we imagine it'll be a lot more difficult to keep people from setting up their own hotspots and even more difficult to prevent the posting of content to Facebook, Twitter, and other sites.
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You know it was the Greeks that invented those things, right? It wasn't the bankers (greek or not) either...
Perhaps they knew better how to make Olympics, but we still felt the need to 'optimize' them .... FTS!
I don't like what the Olympics has become.
The money ruins it in my opinion. Should be given to all networks free. *sigh*
I suspect that there are a good portion of athletes and the general populace that would support the notion of having the games in their spiritual home of Greece. Slightly toned down and cutting some of the peripheral 'me too, me too' sports. Difficult to draw a line I know, but football and stuff?
Personally I don't really care as my interest in the 'games' is at or around the freezing point.
Every 4 years a bunch of people running, jumping etc. than a year or two later the sad story of the run down venues which now need to be paid off by the local tax payers.
Take Athens or Beijing for example.
I rather watch a rerun of MASH :-)
Actually you can not!
Read again, Any 'equipment' over 30cm is not allowed :-) :-)
I thought that the Olympics were public games--and as such, shouldn't you be able to photograph things in public and share them openly? Oh, right, since we have networks bidding top-dollar, they don't want their precious cutthroat content-providing to be infringed upon. Doesn't this go AGAINST what the core of the Olympics values stood for?
Besides, with the extensively-connected devices we have, few people really need to rely on a generated wifi hotspot to transmit data. Might as well, just prohibit ALL devices in general if you think you can impact the situation. Sounds like the committee is living in the previous decade.
They don't make money from exposure. They make money from advertisements, sponsors, tv viewership. They fear people watching the events on social media sites that haven't paid for that 'privilege'.
The last Olympics (Vancouver) weren't nearly this restrictive. They only limited items based on security reasons. The UK keeps trying to become the most controlling country in the world and the IOC is happily going along while counting their money.
A lot of people I know feel the same way about the olympics, and don't bother watching. While I have a lot of admiration for those who compete, the OIC and networks have really sullied the experience from the spectator's perspective.
The IOC should embrace technology and show all events in real time through streaming services. Have a broadcaster for each language. Archive the events. Build an app so people can access via mobile device or plain old internet.