It's always important to remind kids that blogging is not a right in many places in the world. It certainly is a touchy subject in China where criticism of the government can land you in jail or worse. All of which makes the right to blog, of Olympic athletes who will be participating in the upcoming Beijing games, a rather sticky wicket. For now the International Olympic Committee reportedly has ruled that competing athletes will be allowed to blog from the Beijing Olympic Games this summer. This is certainly a positive step, but not enough, according to experts who insist that blogging has a rightful place at any major political or sporting event.
The IOC's blessing on blogging does come with limits. Blogging will be permitted during the games as long as the athletes keep their reflections, observations or photographs outside standard reportage of Olympic events, according to reports. Athletes also will be allowed to transmit photos of themselves, as long as the images are outside the context of their participation in an Olympic event. It will be interesting to see how this all meshes with China, which has invested heavily in the means to curtail this kind of independent information.
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