IOC Bans Press from Sharing GIFs from the Olympics, Internet is Amused

The IOC has a lot to worry about this Olympics: making sure the athletes are safe, making sure the media is safe, making sure the press knows they are NOT allowed under any circumstances to share GIFs… wait, what!? Yes, that’s correct, the International Olympic Committee has banned GIFs.

The news broke this morning when the IOC released their rules for news agencies covering the Olympics. Among those rules was this little tidbit about sharing GIFs, vines, and other short video formats:

…the use of Olympic Material transformed into graphic animated formats such as animated GIFs (i.e. GIFV), GFY, WebM, or short video formats such as Vines and others, is expressly prohibited.

The reason? The official rights holder is NBC, and the IOC is protecting them by not allowing news agencies to share GIFs that might keep you from watching the actual broadcast on television. Why watch the actual event if you can see the highlights—both hilarious and impressive—in GIF form on your Twitter feed?

Given the massive popularity of GIFs on social media the Internet’s reaction to the ban has been… less-than-supportive. Most of the reaction online seems to revolve around wishing the IOC “good luck” enforcing the rule:

It’s not exactly the Streisand effect in action, but we wouldn’t be surprised if Rio now turns out to be the most GIF-ed out Summer Olympics in history. Just don’t expect any official GIF roundups like this.