Points for Participation?

Into the thick of the Olympic sporting competition, Canada is rolling in a litany of 5th, 6th, 7th places … but with track and field, rowing finals and trampolining yet to come, the Canucks still have a chance to visit the podium.

As Tod Maffin twitter’ed: "Maybe Beijing will at least give us a courtesy Participaction pin?(Dont understand this? Ask a Canadian over 30.)" (ed note: or view this Participaction toque).

In the social media production department, Scales continues to create video at an epic pace despite losing his co-hort Kris who was repatriated to Vancouver in time for a glorious summer weekend. Scales is staying busy by picking up more tickets for varied events at the incredible new venues including the whitewater kayak run (plus visits to the Danish hospitality house).

I’m heading to the hills with tent and beverages so here’s a few highlights to enjoy with your weekend viewing:

Buzz Speaks of the Conundrums

Buzz Bishop, an on-air personality at 95Crave, also writes a tech column for daily paper 24 Hours. In an Aug. 13 dispatch, he addressed the fine line between professional accredited media and "grassroots" coverage created and disseminated by non-paid enthusiasts in an article he titled: Olympic Coverage From the Streets of Beijing. Here’s a nugget about this tension between MSM and the rest of us (joined in progress):

But Robert and Kris didn’t pay anything to have official broadcast rights for these games. Is what they’re doing by posting blogs, tweets, photos and streaming videos a violation?

“It’s a really complicated issue,” admits Krug.

“They’ll end up realizing that they can’t control all of it, and they’ll spend less effort trying to block people like us, and more effort monetizing the content they do control.”

The IOC has taken steps to rein in the content online as rights holders’ geoblock their websites to be only accessible within the rights holder’s borders. YouTube has also been approached to make sure highlights from the Games do not appear on the site, until after the rights window has expired.

Youtube with a takedown move

Reminiscent of the Judo competition, Youtube issued a swift takedown to Krug regarding his fan-made clips of a women’s basketball game.

As a registered USA Library of Congress DMCA agent, I know how the procedure works and have received many of these boiler-plate take down notices spewed out by the leery hosting companies with their phalanx of laywers, lackeys and salivating rights-holders. Methinks besides a nicer bedside manner, they could use a better copywriter.

Dear Member:
This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by NBC Universal claiming that this material is infringing: Team USA Women’s Basketball – Beijing 2008: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=fyPrwBVG9zY Please Note: Repeated incidents of copyright infringement will result in the deletion of your account and all videos uploaded to that account. In order to prevent this from happening, please delete any videos to which you do not own the rights and refrain from uploading additional videos that infringe on the copyrights of others.

Dear IOC/VANOC, Join the Conversation

No doubt the IOC need to listen in to social media makers at least a little. With 2010 happening in our open-everything-friendly backyard, perhaps they’ll listen to our message of: We are here and plan to document our experiences.We don’t seek to supplant the rights holder, rather we aim to enrich the experience for worldwide fans, athletes’ families and ourselves for personal expression. Call us, we’ll have coffee and talk – no big whoop.

Fencing De-mystified

Scales often casually mentions jobs/careers/experiences/adventures/skills which we, his colleagues, have little/no idea about. E.g. he’s a reiki practitioner, dive master, served in Canadian Forces, worked for Greenpeace etc. He’s also a fencer – not someone who sells stolen goods but a real sword-wielding fencer.

At my request, he prepared a video to explain this simultaneously classic and futuristic looking sport.

He also delves into the ticket buying scenarios in a video: Buying tickets and Empty seats in Beijing. Empty seats along with a few minor quibbles about the opening ceremonies have become touchstones for the mainstream broadcasters who seem to seek any topic which diminishes the Chinese efforts (or is it just me?)

Up Next

Scales is exploring more sports, armed with a new Canon D9, a Nokia cameraphone and uploading movie with Qik. Check his Flickr photostream for more photos as per his latest tweet which says (sic):

I am beat and amazed at the amount of pictures i took today: 1500+ of fencing and archery.. I need to do some downloand but 1st sleep..

PS I’m Tivo’ing the end of the rain-delayed Canada vs. Cuba Baseball game so don’t tell me who wins.