Vancouver Olympic Committee targets coin dealers (whose taxes helped pay for the Games)
After pleading for hundreds of millions of additional taxpayer dollars in order to put on their two-week show, you would think the people running the Vancouver Olympics would be a bit more humble. But when Canadian coin dealers wanted to help support and promote the Olympics by selling Royal Canadian Mint Olympic coins online, the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC) not only told them that their help was not welcome, it threatened to have the RCM cut the dealers off.
Since when did the Royal Canadian Mint take orders from insolvent debtors like the VANOC?
Just who do these Olympic people think they are?
Here is the coin you are not allowed to see on the internet:Tight restrictions on the marketing of Vancouver 2010 coins imposed by the Games' organizing committee have left many Canadian coin dealers with an Olympic-sized headache.
The primary concern of dealers in Canada is that most of them have been told by the Royal Canadian Mint and/or the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC) that they may not market Olympic coins through their websites.
Canadian Coin News was made aware of the situation by Brian Grant-Duff, of All-Nations Stamps and Coins in Vancouver.
On April 11, Grant-Duff was told by a representative of VANOC that he was not allowed to sell Olympic Royal Canadian Mint products online or use such terms as Vancouver 2010, Olympics, etc. on his website.
"They told me 'you've got 24 hours to get this stuff off your website,' " Grant-Duff said.
Quickly! Avert your eyes!
Actually, you can see it. I just can't market the coin through the website, or suggest you spend any money to buy one.
Nor would I. I mean, why would the Vancouver Olympics need even more money? It's like throwing good money after bad:
Organizers of the Vancouver Winter Olympics will receive an additional $110 million from the Canadian and B.C. governments to cover escalating costs of building venues for the 2010 Games.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper and B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell announced the long-awaited cash infusion during a news conference in Vancouver on Wednesday.
Each level of government will contribute $55 million, bringing taxpayers' expenditure on venue construction to $580 million.
Vancouver Olympic organizers originally pegged the cost of building venues at $470 million.
So the VANOC begs for money from the government. Then it turns around and bullies people trying to promote the Olympics by threatening to have a federal Crown Corporation cut those people off:
[Grant-Duff] added that the VANOC representative threatened to go to the Mint and tell them to cut All Nations off if he continued to market the products online.
You know, the way I figure it, if I was into the government for over half-a-billion dollars, I'd be very circumspect about telling other people that the government dances to my tune.
Of course, the VANOC blames the Mint for the confusion:
Kirk Parsons of Colonial Acres in Kitchener, Ont., which purchases its product from both the Mint and distributors, said his company has been "fighting with the Mint for months on this one."
And when he contacted the Mint, he said the Crown corporation told him everything was being controlled by VANOC, while VANOC told him he should contact the Mint.
The VANOC seems to want to make certain no one actually buys these stupid coins:
In addition to banning online sales of Olympic merchandise, the conditions go as far as to outline how retailers must display the sales of the material in their stores, restricting the amount of floor space the material can take up, and restricting credit card references in advertising to refer only to VISA (the International Programme Partner and official payment card of the Games), even when dealers do accept other credit cards.
I guess by making the effort to purchase a coin an Olympian task, as it were, people might value the purchase more. Personally, I would just be annoyed.
How about this? When the Olympics become a self-sustaining profitable enterprise not requiring a dime (a regular Canadian dime, and not some Olympic commemorative dime) of taxpayer money to put on the dog-and-pony show, then they can be as restrictive and as elitist and as market-unfriendly as they want. But when they grab hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, and then come back and ask for hundreds of millions more, then they lose the right to make these decisions. Like any insolvent debtor, the Olympics ought to be compelled to maximize revenue and maximize exposure at all times in order to get in the black.
In other words, after having begged for over five hundred million dollars of my money and your money, the Olympics ought to put on its tap shoes and start dancing. If it that seems humiliating for such an august organization, too bad. Begging for millions so that some steroid-pumped genetic aberration can bounce up and down on a gym mat should have prepared the Olympic Committee to be able to handle a lot worse humiliation than this.
The Olympic Committee has no moral authority to tell these legitimate coin dealers what they can and cannot sell. These coin dealers work hard and pay their taxes, without asking for handouts from the government. If it weren't for those taxes, the Olympics would have folded already. I think a little gratitude (and lot less attitude) is in order.
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Comments
Umm, these coins do not belong to the VANOC.
These coins are legal tender, and I presume belong to the government.
I can understand not having a webpage with official olympic symbols all over it. That would be pushing it for a coin dealer. Or saming that they are an officially licensed retailer of olympic merchandise.
But to simply advertise a product with a description of "official olympic commerative loonie", or something similar should be permitted.
After all, I can go on ebay and advertise my "Piece of crap, 1989 Dodge Colt," and I don't think that Dodge could come after me. That's an accurate description of what it is. (Actually, I shouldn't complain, before I got rid of that car, it served me faithfully at low cost for many years.)
What I couldn't do is purport that I am an official Dodge retailer.
But from what I've heard, olympic comittees tend to be very pompous, self important groups, who want to control everything down to the last detail. Sort of like most brides trying to plan the "perfect" wedding. (Honey, if you read this, I clearly said "most".)
I honestly don't know what the rules are, but if you wanted to control everything to do with the subdistribution of your product, wouldn't you have to sell it to the dealers with the stipulation that commercial resale was not permitted, sort of like they do with the little bottles of shampoo at the hotel?
The VANOC should have made it clear to the mint when they licensed the product, that they were not permitted to sell it to vendors who would not follow their rules. And the mint would have laughed at them and told them to get bent.
Posted by: mecheng at June 7, 2007 02:29 PM
The Olympics is both a scam and a sham(e)
There is far to much elitist power held by these people which as power will...goes to their head.
Another case in point would be the mom and pop type operations that have been in business and paying taxes for many years...being ordered to change their business name by the Olympic committee because their business name has the word 'Olympic' in it or some such derivative which goes against committee regs.
I ask you,where does this sort of power come from...this exclusivity of name use and concept and backed by the courts to boot !
Posted by: Simon at June 7, 2007 03:39 PM
It's already been decided that you, the taxpayer, must be shaken down in order to provide a spectacle for - yourself - and incidentally to give the people with government connections a lotta dough. You are presumed to have given your consent to this shakedown by having been born in this jurisdiction called "Bananada".
The only thing that has not yet been decided in precise detail is exactly which of you will be shaken down, what trinkets or tokens you will be awarded for your compliance, and which of you will be allowed to make a small cut in exchange for facilitating the shakedown. Please continue touching your toes and thinking happy thoughts until Those Who Decide have completed their, um, benevolent work in the Department of Fascist Pageants.
Governmentalism is indistinguishable from gangsterism in its history, justification, motivation and methods. Only gangsters are more honest.
Posted by: at June 7, 2007 06:35 PM
VANOC has been quite something in its arrogant and bullying of anyone who uses the name "Olympic" in anything from pizza to janitorial services.
Several businesses that existed long before Vancouver was ever awarded the Olympics, have been forced to change their name, or face a lawsuit.
We didn't need circuses in this Province, we desperately need new medical facilities, in many of our major cities, Abbotsford, and Kelowna, to name just two.
It's Gordon Campbell's desperate wish to leave a "legacy". What he'll be remembered for, is spending a lot of taxpayers money to build a highway to a multi billion dollar ski resort most of us can't afford to visit.
Posted by: dmorris at June 7, 2007 07:52 PM
...give it a couple of weeks and China will have Canadian coin knock-off's in circulation.
Posted by: tomax7 at June 8, 2007 07:01 PM
Just who do these Olympic people think they are?
Ummm.... I guess that they think they are the holder of the license to use the five-ring symbol of the games, as well as associated marks, Steve. The RCM doesn't have some inherent right to usurp those symbols by pressing an "olympic coin" - they had to go to the holder of the rights and negotiate a license. If the terms of the license restrict the way in which they can be distributed and marketed, then it is up to the Mint to ensure that the terms of the license are respected, and within the rights of VANOC to do so if the Mint does not. Equally, if the coin dealers involved don't like the license terms, they are under no obligation to handle the coins - but apparently they prefer the idea of violating the license to forgoing the business and, one supposes, the attendant profits.
For sake of argument, let's assume that there is commercial value in your "annoyed beaver" logo, and that I wish to associate my commercial operations with it. You and I reach a deal that I can include the "AB" on my letterhead, with a tagline of "I'm Angry, too!" - but since you are also hoping to sell internet rights to the "AB" to Google (dream big, Steve!) the aggreement stipulates that I make no use of it in web-based communication, blogs, or on my website. Some time later, you discover that I have included the "AB" on my website, and I am actively promoting "Deaner.com" as the "home of the Angry Beaver." How amenable would you be to the argument that as a Canadian taxpayer I had subsidized the provision of electricity to your business (after all, OPG would collapse without their taxpayer-recourse credit rating), as well as the other public infrastructure you rely on, so you should be compelled to accept my conduct? What if you had been directly funded by government - say the Canada Council had thought you had the cultural value of a John Ralston Saul, and had given you a grant - does that mean that your intellectual property is then open to appropriation by every Canadian taxpayer? Particularly if you were merely a licensee yourself of the logo and trademarks, and were restricted in your own use of them, do you think that would be a problem?
There is no question that people can (and do) disagree on the need for the Games, and whther that is the appropriate use of government resources - that is completely irrelevant to the issue of whether VANOC can or should enforce its intellectual property and license rights - no matter how they have been funded.
Posted by: Deaner at June 9, 2007 02:29 PM
 
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