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Lawyer David Fewer of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic in Ottawa said the plan is overkill.

"It goes far beyond just policing the Internet," he said, calling it aggressive.

While Mr. Fewer acknowledged that intellectual property rights holders are entitled to protect their brands and copyrights, he feared the job VANOC wants filled could have a chilling effect on free speech surrounding Olympic issues.

What about someone blogging about the Olympics? he wondered.

"How can you talk about the Olympics without using the word Olympics?" Mr. Fewer asked. "If there's a system set up in place ... that identifies all uses as infringing ... there's a sense that anything that uses all these marks is illegal."

He called the request for proposals something that "rewards heavy-handed surveillance and encourages tattling.

"You're going to see failures or breakdown that go too far that fall on the side of chilling speech rather than protecting intellectual property," Mr. Fewer said.

The Olympic and Paralympic Marks Act - Bill C-47 - was introduced in Ottawa in March to provide "special, time-limited intellectual property protection for Olympic and Paralympic words and symbols."

Its aim, said Industry Minister Maxime Bernier, is to protect Olympic trademarks from being abused by businesses trying to enjoy a free ride on the publicity around the Games, a practice known as "ambush marketing."

Businesses pay big money for the privilege of being designated as official Olympic sponsors.

Olympic organizers say watching out for infringements is crucial to protecting those investors, and by extension, the financial viability of the Games.

The Olympic and Paralympic Marks Act became law on June 22. It expires Dec. 31, 2010, months after the Vancouver Games are over.

Under the legislation, 339 marks of the Canadian Olympic Association are protected, as well as 143 VANOC marks.

Should the new watchdog find a particularly egregious offence in the use of those marks, it would have to rate it as high risk, or a red threat, and immediately bring the infraction to the attention of VANOC.

Medium threats would be ranked as yellow, according to the website.

Organizers came under fire when they attempted to make Vancouver's Olympia Pizza change its name even though it had been in business for many years.

The Games website now says that businesses that used words such as Olympic prior to January of 1998 are not under threat from the new legislation because they are presumed not to be out to profit from the Vancouver Games.

But any business that used the trademarks after that date would be asked to stop using them, the site says.