Digital Trends
Customers of Apple’s iTunes store in China have been having trouble signing into the service and downloading songs during the last week, leading to speculation that Chinese authorities are possibly trying to block access to a new Tibet-themed album from the Art of Peace Foundation, Songs for Tibet, featuring new music from artists like Sting, Garbage, Vanessa Carlton, and John Mayer, along with a 15-minute discussion from exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama.
The International Olympic Committee today launches its YouTube channel to offer coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. It will be accessible in a total of 77 countries – but the US won’t be one of them.
Why? NBC has the US broadcast rights for the games.
The channel will only be accessible in countries where digital video-on-demand rights have not been sold or acquired for exclusive airing, said Information Week. Most of the countries where YouTube footage will be offered are in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
Inspectors for the International Olympic Committee have told Chinese authorities that they expect China to offer unrestricted Internet access for the duration of the Olympic games—as stipulated in the host city contract Beijing committed to when it was selected as host for the 2008 Summer Olympics.
China runs the most extensive Internet surveillance and censorship operation on the planet, routinely restricting Chinese citizens’ access to information and media sources around the world. The Chinese government is usually the first cited in reports decrying net censorship and online speech restrictions: China has imprisoned online journalists and bloggers critical of the Beijing government or who speak out in favor of democracy; more recently, China has shut down access to sites carrying information on unrest in Tibet.
Sega yesterday announced they’d reached a licensing agreement with International Sports Multimedia, exclusive licensee of the International Olympic Committee, to become the publisher of the Official Video Game of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. As part of the agreement, Sega secured exclusive rights to publish interactive titles across various gaming platforms.
The Official Video Game of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, said Sega, will include a wide variety of featured sports, such as aquatics (diving and swimming), archery, baseball, basketball, boxing, canoe/kayak, cycling, equestrian, fencing, football (soccer), gymnastics, handball, field hockey, Judo, modern pentathlon, rowing, sailing, shooting, softball, table tennis, Taekwondo, tennis, triathlon, volleyball, weightlifting, and wrestling.
Take-Two Interactive Software’s 2K Sports video game publishing label yesterday announced an agreement with International Sports Multimedia, the exclusive licensee of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for interactive entertainment software, to release Torino 2006 – the Official Video Game of the XX Olympic Winter Games.
Torino 2006, which will be available in January for the PC, Playstation 2 and Xbox, features eight winter sports, 15 events, wintry landscapes and commentator analysis. The game will also offer a up to four player multiplayer mode which allows gamers to go either head to head or in turn based play.
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