What the heck is this? The Vatican?

The International Olympic Committee seems to be adopting the Vatican’s time-honored policy “Yesterday’s technology tomorrow!”

From FNC:

No Tweets, Instagrams, iPhones at the Olympics, authorities declare

The 2014 Olympics might feel more like 1914.

Journalists attending the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics in Russia will be forbidden from using everyday technology to take pictures and share information — the mobile phones and tablets that have woven themselves into the fabric of daily life, the Olympics committee said.

“Journalists using mobile phones to film athletes or spectators will be considered a serious violation and will result in cancellation of accreditation,” Vasily Konov, head of the state-run R-Sport news agency, which controls accreditation at February’s games, told a seminar for sports journalists.

That means no iPhone pictures, no Vine videos, no Instagram accounts sharing the minute-by-minute details of the events, no Twitter accounts with updates and so on.

According to Russian news site Svoboda, the ban will including all mobile devices and tablets, including iPhones and iPads. Fans may be banned from carrying in professional camera gear as well.

Several journalists have already fallen foul of strict accreditation regulations surrounding the Olympics, Buzzfeed reported Monday, including Dutch journalists working on a multimedia project and a Norwegian TV crew.

I was looking forward to the live-blogging of the all-important CURLING events.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
This entry was posted in You must be joking! and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink.

14 Comments

  1. No More Tambourines says:

    Careful Father, those Curling hooligans can be quite violent.

  2. pvmkmyer says:

    Well, when you award the games to Russia, what else would you expect?

  3. frodo says:

    First time I saw curling I yelled up to my wife “Honey! What the heck happened to the Olympics? There’s some weird brooming “sport” on. This is riduclous. Har har har!” I then realized that 3 hours of my life had inexplicably disappeared. Apparently, curling is hypnotic.

    /shiver

  4. OrthodoxChick says:

    Any chance the Russians are imposing this rule because they have a great deal of experience with terrorism and know that bombs are often detonated by wireless devices like cell phones? Trying to find the upside…

  5. Joe in Canada says:

    I imagine it has more to do with broadcast rights than anything else.
    Curling rocks! [*RIM SHOT*] It is indeed hypnotic.

  6. Heather F says:

    Man, I would have loved to see live-blogged curling. I mean, how else will we know what all the cool Norweigians are wearing to the rink?

  7. Venerator Sti Lot says:

    Presumably some high-level competition going on here. Most if not all contemporary ‘world’-level sports seem to involve outrageous organizational thuggery, such as banning free competition by small vendors, requiring the availablity of prostitution, etc., etc.

  8. OrthodoxChick, yep, that would more than likely be the reason.

  9. Imrahil says:

    Most if not all contemporary ‘world’-level sports seem to involve outrageous organizational thuggery, such as banning free competition by small vendors, requiring the availablity of prostitution,…

    which is one of the reasons (though obviously laudable concerns about prostitution were not playing their part in what I allude to; the general notion of thuggery however most expressly was) you should, as a politician or functionary, not ask the people about it if you want to stage such an event at your home.

    The plan to apply for the Olympic Winter Games of 2022 in Germany was just this weekend smashed and torn into pieces by the electorates of the affected counties (which is City of Munich, Garmisch, Traunstein and Berchtesgaden).

  10. yatzer says:

    CURLING!!!!! Yes! Loved it before, can’t wait.

  11. Nan says:

    Perhaps Siberia doesn’t have the infrastructure to handle the load.

  12. JARay says:

    It is SOOOOO long since I first encountered curling. That was in Aviemore, Scotland. When the curling was over we went ice-skating. Memories of a long distant past!!!!!
    We didn’t have ipads either. They had not been invented!
    It was a saner world.

  13. APX says:

    How can anyone dislike curling? It’s the only Olympic sport that Joe Blow down at the computer store can participate in and become an Olympic gold medalist while still working full time for minimum wage. I know one skip who also attends the TLM and sings in the schola. Would that make you more fond of curling??

  14. Mightnotbeachristiantou says:

    I doubt this is true. Samsung is giving all the athletes phones. They are hoping people tweet and blog through out the game.

    Since I am in Germany I am hoping for the curling times to be watchable.

Comments are closed.