International Olympic Committee ordered PEI blogger to remove a luger death video from his website

Stephen Pate of NJN Network received take down order from IOC

CBC News – Nodar Kumaritashvili, 21 of Georgia, died during a training run Feb. 12, just hours before the Olympic opening ceremonies. Stephen Pate, publisher of the online site NJN Network, published the video along with commentary about the death, and the IOC has since ordered him in an email to take it down.

The email states the IOC owns the rights to all images of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, and only licensed broadcasters can use them. Pate said he won’t remove the video, because Canada’s Copyright Act allows the use of copyrighted material as part of a news story.

“One of the rights is for news organizations to report the news, so it’s a news story,” said Pate.

“The man died. Why did he die, was there negligence, what happened? And secondly, why is an international sports body trying to restrict the right of the public to see the story? And that made it a newsworthy item to write up.”

A spokesperson from the IOC told CBC News it had two main reasons for ordering that the luge video be taken down.

One is to protect the IOC’s exclusive rights and those of the official broadcasters. The other is the IOC feels it’s disrespectful to the Kumaritashvili family.