> The Olympics are an incredibly expensive event to put on that many people love and someone needs to pay for it.
I am continually fascinated by the idea, often proposed in other contexts than this one, that we must spend money as an axiom and then figure out how to fund it as a corollary.
I don't really disagree with your dichotomy: we can either have expensive events or sane intellectual property law, but not both. I'm merely wondering at which meeting we picked one over the other, and what happened to my invitation :-)
I do disagree with the dichotomy; I doubt firms would stop paying to be official sponsors just because others were allowed to use the terms sensibly (i.e. not implying that they were affliated with the Games).
Also, we already have plenty of trademark protections. I don't see why they're not sufficient for the Olympics, given that they seem to work fine for everything else.
Because the IOC demanded that their minions be designated a privileged class. The parliament of the day fell over themselves to give in to those demands.
They had to! The games might have gone to Paris. Wouldn't that have been terrible?
I think the argument goes that they're such a high-profile target for trademark infringement that it would be impossible for them to police and enforce it to a sufficient degree without extra state protection.
I am continually fascinated by the idea, often proposed in other contexts than this one, that we must spend money as an axiom and then figure out how to fund it as a corollary.
I don't really disagree with your dichotomy: we can either have expensive events or sane intellectual property law, but not both. I'm merely wondering at which meeting we picked one over the other, and what happened to my invitation :-)