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Beware video from the IOC

If the monospaced font is out to play, you know that means that this is a technical alert. Well, okay, maybe you didn't. But you do now. Anyway, you know we here at Wikia encourage communities to upload videos only from the YouTube accounts of copyright holders. And the main copyright holder for the Olympics is, obviously, the IOC, while the main source in a particular country is typically a national Olympic Committee.

The bad news for this wiki is that the IOC's official YouTube account does not allow genuine video embeds here at Wikia.

What's a "genuine embed"? One that plays on a page here at Wikia. And IOC videos don't do that. They look for all the world like a successfully-uploaded video. But when you try to play the video, you get a message directing you to watch the video on YouTube. And that's not embedding; that's just offsite redirection.

Note that this condition is not just something that happens to videos from the current Olympiad. The IOC haven't loosened their grip on footage that's well past its sell-by date, either. Give the following three videos a go:


IOC 2014 footage IOC 2012 footage IOC 2008 footage
Usain_Bolt_Breaks_100m_World_Record_In_9.69_Seconds_-_Beijing_2008_Olympics


See what I mean? No joy at all. The good news is that videos from the official Team USA, Team GB and Team AUS YouTube accounts play fine:


Team US Team GB Team AUS


Also, there are plenty of news agencies who cover the Olympics, and they are a great source of general videos about sports and athletes. For instance, The Wall Street Journal has done an excellent series of videos explaining training regimens in various sports. And regional or global sports federations can be lifesavers if you're trying to find legal videos about particular disciplines.


WSJ previews Luge World Curling Federation video
Winter_Olympics_2014_Preview_Luge_Training_Sochi_Olympics World_Curling_Federation_Promo_Video


So, while it pretty much sucks for our content development that IOC videos don't play here, it's hardly the end of the world. There are still hundreds, if not thousands, of completely legal videos that we could use to spruce up the joint. If we look around a bit.

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