How is declaring your love for the Olympics online any different than bringing a homemade poster down town Vancouver during the games, to cheer your team on?

Well apparently there is a difference to VANOC and the COC. For example, fans at the games holding homemade posters to cheer on their favorite team or athlete will be forced to cover up any Official Olympic Symbols due to copy-write infringement. However, on the Official Olympic Facebook Fanpage, any one or any organization has the ability to link themselves to the games without being an Official Sponsor. When given the option to outline rules and regulations for the Official Olympic Facebook Fanpage regarding what can and cannot be said due to copy-write laws, it would appear that both VANOC and COC chose to allow all fan based content to appear on the page as is. No where on the page, is there any public information or guidelines about any policing of content. It seems like no big deal until companies begin to take advantage of this opportunity to post information about their cause, company, event or product. This allows them to be linked to the Olympics, without having to pay the high priced amount for being an official sponsor. Other sporting events, organizations and individuals selling service, which are in no way connected to the Olympics, are able to post links to their event on the page, and therefore are able to draw traffic to their own site, all of which is free of cost. There seems to be another hope that consumers will assume that these companies are Olympic Sponsors, and they can then link the company image to that of the Olympic brand.

The reason this is so surprising is because the Olympics have a long history of protecting their sponsors and heavily policing the use of their copy-written symbols. As mentioned above, stories have surfaced about how fans were treated at previous games with their homemade posters. All posters with the Olympic rings, or any copy-written Olympic words and symbols were covered with black tape supplied on site by the organizers. A fan has no financial gain by making a poster to support their team, but companies having their link on an Official Olympic page definitely do. So the question remains; are online fan site the last of the un-policed Olympic Licensing?

- by Becky Caissie