The Assholympics

In celebration of the recent Ravelympic assholery, which is merely the latest in a long string of "intellectual property"-oriented assholery (such as extraditing a UK citizen to the US for linking to unlicensed copyrighted material ) --

I propose The Assholympics -- an annual event in which anyone may nominate one or more Professional Assholes for consideration.

"Professional Assholes" (referred to as "asselites" because of the excellence of their elite assholic skillz) are those who use their positions of authority and/or public trust(1) in a way that runs counter to the public interest.

These "asselites" will each run against each other in several categories of assholery and douchebaggery and we will award medals named after various appropriate materials within each category.

The Assholympics will be held during that big athletic event currently scheduled to take place in London from July 27 to August 12.

During the course of this event, I pledge and endeavor to make every effort to parody and savage various trademarks, copyrighted works not under the control of their creators, and other "intellectual property" in order to express my complete and utter disdain for those who make it their business to own the results of other people's work.

Assholism can be in other areas besides IP "rights", though I expect that area will be one of the most hotly contested.

Purpose

• to draw much-needed attention to especially vile behavior, especially betrayals of public trust
• to draw further attention to the fact that IP laws have gone too damn far (I know -- "duhhh", right? But apparently there are still people on Earth(2) who haven't realized this.)
• and to further rub the USOC's nose in the sheer magnitude and stinkyness of their assholitude -- with special note being made of the fact that "The Olympic Games" aka "The Olympics" were started in ancient fucking Greece, thank you very much, and should never ever have been granted to any private entity as a trademark.

So... send me nominations! Links to news articles and/or descriptions of their qualifications will help smooth the nomination process.

Nominations

• The USOC -- for their handling of the Ravelympics (insulting fiber artists everywhere), and subsequently not backing down
  • USOC Licensing Dept. deserves a special award [1]
  • Summary of trademark issues here
    • San Francisco Arts & Athletics, Inc. v. United States Olympic Comm.
• Charles Carreon and FunnyJunk Ars Technica
• Antonin Scalia -- for the Montana campaign funding decision? Need more info.
  • 2012-06-26 Scalia's Arizona Dissent
    • commentary: Cindy Brown
• Various other Supreme Court members
  • http://grist.org/article/food-supreme-court-ruling-on-monsanto-alfalfa/
• New York Police Department -- for Occupy Wall Street
• Mayor Bloomberg -- for Occupy Wall Street
• UC Davis, Linda Katehi, officer wossname -- for pepper-spray and general handling of Occupy UC Davis
• Karel De Gucht, EU Commissioner, for announcing that the Commission will continue to pursue ACTA regardless of public outcry

Notes

1) Large international private organizations are not exempted from being considered to have a position of public trust -- even if only because of their relentless propaganda advertising campaigns trying to convince us all to trust them.

2) I can't speak for the astronauts on the International Space Station, but I'd bet even they are aware of it.)

Reference

• Olympic Rings logo