Olymp*c Shames, or how to make a bad thing worse

My logo suggestion for the games I cannot legally name.

From the Guardian comes news that could seriously impact classical studies in the year after AD 2011. The committee which cannot legally be named, has copyrighted a word which rhymes with Molympic and the number you get if you subtract 6,519 from 8,531. If you plan to meet someone in the England’s capital city just before a quarter-past-eight in the evening then by law you will have to be vague.

I’m not quite sure how this is going to work. For instance what happens to anyone who wants to count legally. Will this mean that the count will now run 2010, 2011, umph, 2013 or will 2013 now be an even number? Equally uncertain what happens if the offending number occurs in a string of other numbers. It is possible that it will now only be legal to list pi to 7,202 decimal places. ((Yes, I checked.))

The justification given in copyrighting the name of the world’s premier quadrennial games is that it’s to prevent confusion so that you know you’re getting official merchandise rather than something Unlympic. Imagine the confusion that could ensue if you sat in a cafe which was not licenced by the unnameable committee and ordering a cup of tea. It hardly bears thinking about. Ok, so it sounds trivial but there are a couple of potential consequences.

From a narrow perspective classicists are paying more attention to sport in the ancient world. That includes the Delphic, Nemean and Isthmian Games as well as the Games That Cannot Legally Be Named. There’s always an upturn in books about the history of the ancient games every four years, but the Committee, according to the Guardian story, is already attempting to censor book titles. This could prevent you finding what the recent research on the most famous sporting festival is. While I think it’s highly unlikely the Coubertin crew would go after pi-philes, I could see them wanting to sell an official history.

This is one example of a broader and deeper concern. The passing of the Statutory Instruments which created this farce have established the legal principle that common cultural property can be taken out of the public domain and placed into the private hands of anyone rich enough to enforce their claim. There is no doubt if there’s one word which should be in the public domain it’s this one. Not least because Baron Coubertin openly took the idea from a festival in the village of Much Wenlock. This is freely admitted by the Committee of the Games based on the festival in Olympia. The Much Wenlock O-Games were the product of William Penny Brookes who died in 1895. Even if the games didn’t date from 776 BC, with copyright at life and ninety years in the UK, the title of the event has surely passed out of copyright? All the creations protected by the extension of copyright laws were made when the creators thought the limits were shorter. This isn’t about encouraging innovation, its about greed. The games which were about celebrating the amateur sportsman have been corrupted.

It would be ridiculous for a publisher to copyright the word Aristophanes or Sparta. It should be equally mockable that someone should claim copyright on the word Olympic.