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Olympic Rings and Velodrome 3x2 (c) Simon MacMichaelLeave.EU ignores British Olympic Association demand to remove Team GB video
Leave.EU, which is campaigning for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union, has ignored a demand from the British Olympic Association (BOA) to stop using images of Team GB medal winners at Rio and from seeking to associate itself with the Games.
As we reported yesterday, gold and silver medal-winning track sprinter Callum Skinner asked Leave.EU, co-founded last year by UKIP donor Arron Banks and had Nigel Farage as its figurehead during the EU referendum campaign, not to use his image in a video montage posted to social media.
@LeaveEUOfficial @TeamGB thanks the the support but I wish you wouldn't use my image to promote your campaign.
— Callum Skinner (@CallumSkinner) August 16, 2016
The organisation, which was apparently seeking to equate Team GB’s Olympic success with the vote in June's referendum for theUK to leave the EU, subsequently revealed that it had received a letter from the British Olympic Association which asked it to confirm that“all social media posts and online content has been immediately removed and any other usages of our intellectual property.”
In a blog post published on its website yesterday, Leave.EU said: “Following in the footsteps of NASA and Victoria Beckham, the British Olympics Association has decided to sue Leave.EU for pointing out how great Team GB are doing.
“Throughout the referendum campaign, remaniacs constantly talked Britain down, believing we were too small and too pathetic to succeed outside of the EU.
“We understand they’re still pissed that the majority of people do believe in Britain and want us to succeed as an independent country outside of the crumbling EU, but to try and stop us promoting just how great we’re doing reeks of desperation.”
> Callum Skinner asks Leave.EU campaign not to use his photo
The International Olympic Committee’s Rule 40 places restrictions on marketing and other communications, such as on social media, by “non-Olympic partners” while the Games are in progress, including by “businesses and organisations who are not official sponsors of Team GB or the IOC.”
BOA lawyer Poonam Majithia said in the letter, which Leave.EU reproduced on its website: “It has come to our attention that the Official Leave EU Campaign has published a number of posts on via the Twitter and Facebook social media channels (screenshots attached), including a video which extensively utilise the above marks as well as Team GB athlete imagery.”
Outlining that usage of Olympic-related intellectual property such as images of Team GB athletes without its consent infringed the BOA’s rights, she set Leave.UK a deadline of 5pm yesterday to:
- confirm the extent to which the Leave EU Campaign has been using our IP, i.e. whether it has used our IP on any other channels than as identified in this email;
- confirm that all social media posts and online content has been immediately removed and any other usages of our intellectual property have been immediately ceased;
- confirm the number of views and shares that the video has received on both Twitter and Facebook; and
- confirm you will refrain from making any further use of our IP.
As of 2pm on Thursday – 21 hours after that deadline expired – the video Skinner had objected to, and which incorrectly says he won silver rather than gold in the team sprint, was still on Leave.EU’s Twitter feed.
In its blog post, Leave EU added: “They [the BOA] even want us to stop supporting our very own Andy Wigmore who moonlights as an Olympic shooter for Team Belize when he’s not running our communications. Anybody who has followed Wigmore’s Olympic saga will know he needs all the support he can get!”
According to the Rio 2016 website, Belize has three athletes competing at the Olympics – Brandon Jones and Katy Sealy in athletics, and judoka Renick James. Wigmore does not appear, with the London Evening Standard reporting that he failed to qualify. He is in Rio, however, as part of the country’s delegation, but not as a competitor.
He had previously hoped to shoot at London 2012 through securing a Tripartite Commission place, designed to give athletes from smaller countries a chance to compete at the Olympics, but instead attended the Games in the capacity of attaché to the Belize team.
Wigmore did compete in the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games, when the shooting events were held at the Ministry of Defence-owned Barry Buddon training area near Dundee, finishing 34th out of 36 competitors in the trap competition.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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23 comments
It's all just a blip anyway. I don't really blame Brexiteers for taking us out - sometimes you just want to express your ire and I think many of them did just that.
The overarcing issue is that we're increasingly automated and increasingly efficient at providing services. We need a new model of working. 4 day work weeks, job shares, regular dividends and profit shares, working off location, pay ratios etc. Traditional concepts of labor need re-worked.
Those core cultural changes are the long term fix.
Other cultural changes that reduce financial burden are of course cycling as the main accepted mode of commuting and a mass reduction in junk food intake, fats, sugars, salts. NHS bills make this essential to responsible living. Where is the ethical justification for responsible adults paying for the reckless? In any case, all of which can be leapfrogged by political will. Debate isn't really necessary on issues like cycling, climate change and health. Science determines the benefits.
Green energy needs huge investment, can't believe we don't have a nationalised UK business creating the equivalent of the Tesla powerbank. Pathetic. Then again, everything we've ran nationally has been pretty horribly mismanaged, so I'd settle for a private company doing it.
Of course, ask a lot of Brexiteers if they have much interest in any of these concepts and you'll likely draw a bank. Probably draw a blank from most remainers too though.
Erm, The "majority" of the electorate did not vote that way.
The majority of those that voted did vote that way, which is, for better or worse, all that matters.
True. Ok 'voters' then, not electorate.
How unlike a Brexiteer to have to "clarify" their statment; anyone seen the NHS £350m?
Brexiteers convinced themselves that once free of Brussels, it's only a matter if time before Raleigh start employing thousands to mass steel bikes in Nottingham once again. Unfortunately its a romantic nonsense that an awful lot of older people genuinely believe.
British bikes made of British steel by British workers!
Mass employment in manufacturing might not return but a few bike companies (including Raleigh) are reshoring parts of their manufacturing.
In fact, Frog bikes have just opened a new factory in Pontypool, was in the paper today.
The IOC get *very* protective of their intellectual property. In the build-up to the 2012 games, UK law was amended to make sure nobody was allowed to incorporate a company with "2012", "gold", "silver ", "bronze ", or "London" in the name.
“We understand they’re still pissed that the majority of people do believe in Britain..."
It's pretty odd using an American expression, when you trying to convince people that you're amazing British patriots. Twats.
I am pretty sure Britain is a real entity. I believe we are still a confident, successful country, but not because of Brexit or because we will be better of without the EU. It isn't a nill-sum game. The fact that the the Leave campaign persuded enough people to believe that is still flabbergasting.
That is the point; they want the American model where the rich are kings and the rest are stuffed. Closet Trump supporters the lot of them!
And communists.....seemingly also with a penchant for one word general assertions about people they have never met.
Noticed a couple of 2017 bikes that are the same spec bar colour/decals going up by 15 and 20% on the 2016 models.
Brexiteers don't give a ff about the rules; their whole campaign was about negativity and disruption. They'll be claiming it is EU rules that stop them posting next. It's very sad in the old day these middle aged fascists bought sports cars to make up for their obvious inadequacies; now there only happy dicking with other people's financial futures!
My other hobby is photography and prices are already going up by as much as 20% whereas before the referendum they were creeping down!
Funny you mention that my recent upgrade to Di2 and new hoops was quoted £1500 pre Brexit, cost £1800 post. Brexit will have no affect according to the huan cares who voted for it! And as for the muppets who say you lost the vote get over it; you lost it in 1974 and never did, so what's good for the goose.........
#FirstWorldProblems
Methinks you might be out of touch with the reasons that the majority of the electorate voted the way they did.
I love the way the Brexiteers keep trotting out the same old over-simplification about the falling pound being good for exports. Yes, in the short term it does help those exporters who don't have a supply base priced in dollars (which is everything from oil to pork bellies). More to the point, the pound falls due to money leaving the country, and it is a mystery to me how these idiots can't join up the dots and see that hundreds of billions leaving the country ultimately means lost jobs, lost investment and a poorer country.
Brexiteers don't give a ff about the rules; their whole campaign was about negativity and disruption. They'll be claiming it is EU rules that stop them posting next. It's very sad in the old day these middle aged fascists bought sports cars to make up for their obvious inadequacies; now there only happy dicking with other people's financial futures!
If you feel that strongly about Brexit you should have done something about it before the vote. Too late now!
What exactly should have been 'done about it'? Apart from voting democratically. Have you been listening to Donald Trump? Leave campaign lies were called out time and again. Your leaders had reneged on their promises within 24 hours. When the final deal is done you will find it is a lot less independant that you hoped. Just about the only good thing to come out of this is the disappearance of Nigel Farage.
There is an accepted political strategy that depends on those using it to distort statistics; tell half truths (based on some facts)and down right lie to confuse the average voter. I'm not like the billionaire funding this type of activity; what exactly did you want me to do...... hire a hit man to take Farage, Johnson and Gove out? I voted Remain and like those pathetic racists, who've lied about the EU since 1974, I shall point out the error of this decision for the rest of my days...... which thankfully will be a lot less than those I've already clocked up!