The Assholympics

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

I propose The Douchebag Olympics -- an annual event in which anyone may nominate one or more Professional Douchebags for consideration.

"Professional Douchebags" (referred to as "Douchelites" because of the excellence of their elite douchebag 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 "Douchelites" will each run against each other in several categories of douchebaggery (TBA), and we will award medals named after various appropriate materials within each category.

The Douchebag Olympics 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.

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

The purpose of this is 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 douchebaggery -- 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 as 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.

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.)