Two years ago, Chinese site Sohu.com beat out the competition with an estimated $30 million bid to become the exclusive internet sponsor of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. What that actually means is still unclear. Sohu.com (Nasdaq: SOHU) naturally wants to make the most of its advantage over Sina.com, Netease, Tencent and the others. In the process, reports the Journal, the company is insisting to ad agencies and others that online ads from sponsors that carry the Beijing Olympic logo can only only appear on its site. But others disagree and the Beijing committee hasn’t clarified what “exclusive” means, producing what ad exec calls “mass confusion” as planning ramps up.

Here are the known parameters: International participants in The Olympic Partner program governing use of the iconic “five rings” logo aren’t included. At most, Sohu’s claim covers partners and sponsors of the Beijing committee (only they have the right ti use the running-man logo within China) and web sites based in China, including, as the WSJ points out, the localized versions of Yahoo, Google, MSN, etc. The question, then: do other sponsors at the same exclusive level as Sohu have to right to run ads with the logo anywhere online or is Sohu the only site in China that can carry ads with the logo?

A lot is at stake considering that China’s rapidly growing online ad market and the ad dollars that flow during the Olympics.

Media crackdown: Meanwhile, with what sometimes seems like hourly negative reports about goods from China and the spate of equally negative reports following the milestone start of the year-long countdown to the Olympics, it shouldn’t be surprising that the Chinese government is cracking down on the country’s media yet again. From the NYT: “According to The People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s official newspaper, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, and the State Press and Publication Administration together warned that, “Those who intentionally fabricated news that caused public anxiety and tarnished the nation’s image would be harshly dealt with or even prosecuted if they broke the law. ... Their news organizations would also be penalized.” The timing may be because of the “politically sensitive” Communist Party congress starting in two months; the congress is held every five years. The Times says there are reports of some instances of bad behavior by journalists.

Coincidentally, the U.S. Congress is looking into Yahoo’s compliance with an earlier crackdown and the role the company played in a 10-year sentence for a Chinese journalist.

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