Reply from the Olympics

The Olympic Committee has attempted to explain its actions in relation to the Creative Commons and the Richard Giles affair. This via Techdirt:

Last week, we wrote about the International Olympic Committee’s complaints concerning a guy, Richard Giles, who had posted some images he took at the Beijing Olympics on Flickr under a Creative Commons license. At the time, it wasn’t entirely clear if the complaint was the license or that the photos were up, at all, but as we noted, either way, it didn’t make sense. The IOC has responded and said the main complaint is with the Creative Commons license, but, again, it’s difficult to see how the IOC has any argument at all. The photos were taken by Giles, and thus he has every right to license them as he sees fit — including under CC licenses. Furthermore, as Thomas Hawk points out in the link above, once you license something CC, you can’t go back on it. It’s still not clear why the IOC sees this as a bad thing. Giles is helping to promote their event. For free. Next time, maybe he should just send them a bill.