Stupid Olympics Site Hyperlink Policy

So here they are — the 2004 Summer Olympics from Athens.

A symbol of openness, peace, working together, healthy competition, yadda, yadda.

And then we have this completely idiotic hyperlinking policy on the official Athens Olympics website:

For your protection and ours we have established a procedure for parties wishing to introduce a link to the ATHENS 2004 website on their site. By introducing a link to the ATHENS 2004 official Website on your site you are agreeing to comply with the ATHENS 2004 Website General Terms and Conditions. In order to place a link embedded in copy interested parties should:

a) Use the term ATHENS 2004 only, and no other term as the text referent

b) Not associate the link with any image, esp. the ATHENS 2004 Emblem (see paragraph below)

c) Send a request letter to the Internet Department stating:

  • Short description of site
  • Reason for linking
  • Unique URL containing the link (if no unique URL than just the main URL)
  • Publishing period
  • Contact point (e-mail address)

Once the request has been mailed, interested parties can proceed to include the link and will only receive a response if ATHENS 2004 does not accept the link.

Ok, so I was going to complain about lack of syndication support, but really, this is kind of rediculous. I thought we were done with inane linking policies in 2000, but apparently the Olympic Oraganizing Commitee is at least three years behind the times. And they claim it’s “for my protection”??? Harumph.

Thinking about this for a minute, there are two possible motivations for this BS: Either they’re really stupid (not so likely) and trying to actually only allow links that they sign off on, or they’re really stupid (also not so likely) and they’re trying to find out who’s linking to them.

Ok, so they’re stupid. They can’t prevent links, and they don’t know how to look at referer logs. (But then again, if they’re Greek, and they tried to look up "referer" in the English/Greek dictionary, that would be trouble too, but let’s not go there.)

I must admit though, that they’ve stayed up-to-date in the TV-realm: The opening ceremonies were quite impressive in HD. Now if only I could choose to watch the events that I actually want to watch. Oh wait — that’s NBC’s fault…

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