First Amendment Rights Curbed?

[Trillo]

Title: IOC prevents athletes from reporting on experiences through weblogs

ATHENS (AP) - The International Olympic Committee (news - web sites) is barring competitors, as well as coaches, support personnel and other officials, from writing firsthand accounts for news and other websites.

An exception is if an athlete has a personal website that they did not set up specifically for the Games.

The IOC (news - web sites)'s rationale for the restriction is that athletes and their coaches should not serve as journalists -and that the interests of broadcast rightsholders and accredited media come first.

Participants in the Games may respond to written questions from reporters or participate in online chat sessions -akin to a face-to-face or telephone interview -but they may not post journals or online diaries, blogs in Internet parlance, until the Games end Aug. 29.
more...
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/cpress/20040820/ca_pr_on_tc/oly_athletes_reporting_1

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Are Olympic athletes now considered "employees"? What I'm seeing here over a century or so, is that first "speech" is ruled as "money", and those with more money get larger megaphones--fast forward to the present--now, "big money" is "controlling the speech of individuals".

Is this now an expansion beyond the right of an employer to curb a employee's speech? If so, who's next?

[rustydog]

1. First of all, Freedom of speech is an American constitutional right

the games are taking place in GREECE, not on American soil or protected interest.

second, the concept of free speech was drafted in the context that the Government(congress) would not impede freedom of speech, the IOC is not Congress.

Employees in America never had freedom of speech guarantees in the workplace.

What is scarier is Bush incorporate d's idea of "free speech"zones, where people who do have a constitutionally-guaranteed right to petition the government their grievances, are penned up in remote locations out of view of the Government they are protesting and out of sight of the media and public.

America is a free speech zone, the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Canadian and Mexican borders constitute the boundary of America's Free Speech Zone and we need to reclaim it now!

[elehhhhna]

2. "The interests of Media come first" ?!!! Chilling. Game over.

[Trillo]

3. For American athletes, where are their websites "physically located"?