Monday 16 July 2012

Sports day


In the biggest-ever crackdown on copyright infringement in UK history, the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) have trained and deployed a crack squadron of undercover operatives.

Disguised as ordinary slightly-overweight people in tracksuits, these experts in copyright law will travel the country enforcing special new legislation banning (among others) the words "gold", "silver" and "bronze", "summer", "sponsors" and "London" from anything written "for commercial purposes". Given that nobody, except us here at Space and a few enthusiasts at Wikipedia whose existance has never been conclusively proven, writes anything for the sheer joy of it anymore, this includes everything written since about 1985.

"It's all about the sport", explained a spokesman on behalf of Locog. "We don't want anyone using the Olympics for something as grubby as, you know, making money. Oh, except our sponsors, of course."

He went on "Ooops! I said Olympics" and before being able to explain further was dragged off to get stoned.

Further enquiries have revealed that the new law in question covers not only the words themselves, but also the objects and actions they describe. A Mr Dwayne Charver of Peckham was the first UK individual to feel the full force of the new legislation when he was hustled off to his local police station for sporting a gold chain. Silver Service waiters have also been rounded up, along with silver surfers and bronze turkeys. The recession is being artificially prolonged because of the risk of prosecution incurred by silver linings.

A large-scale enforcement operation is underway to place the entire city of London under arrest, and the sponsoring of anything except the Olympics is now illegal unless the action of funding is described using some other verb (such as "trouser" or "slug").

The most ambitious enforcement operation of all, however, remains shrouded in secrecy and is believed to involve the impounding of the entire UK season of Summer.