A Step in the Right Direction: USATF Acts Quickly and Reinstates Sisu Club XC Nats Video

wejo wrote:

According to Amanda Wright in her write-up of what happened to their club's video, Norman Wain, General Counsel to USATF, did admit to Amanda he didn't watch the video, but he did reiterate that USATF had the rights to it. A possible explanation is there was a longer video USATF wanted taken down, they got their legal people involved, legal tried to take everything down, and then the decision makers at USATF clarified they didn't want everything taken down.

I know multiple people who have had videos taken down by USATF, this has been going on for some time. It seems pretty clear that they have a staffer whose primary job duty is to search the internets for "USATF" videos and get them taken down.

I don't buy the mixup at all. The girl at the National Office was following orders when she took down Sisu's video.

"USATF now realizes promotion of the sport by its clubs is a good thing . . ."

Well, it's good that they are just now coming to the realization that promotion of their sport is a good thing. Better late than never. Wow.

How did they happen on to this novel idea? I mean, who'd have thought that promotion of the sport is a good thing? They must have paid some high-priced corporate life coach to come in and do a brainstorming activity to come up with that.

It's good to see USATF do the right thing here, but wow, are we bush league or what. Seriously, the CEO of USATF has to get involved in a minor issue like a random club's XC highlight video? He is issuing press releases on this? It's sad that it was worth USATF's time to take the video down in the first place, even sadder that there had to be a meeting with the "full senior leadership team" (Max's words) to get the issue rectified. A college intern should have been able to handle this BS in 10-minutes. I say again, bush league.

Maybe this was USATF overcompensating after all the backlash with the Hightower/Bob Hersh controversy. Would be nice to see them do the right thing there too.

wejo wrote:

The letter does have a paragraph that I don't quite understand. Max writes, "After speaking with several individuals in the office, it appears that a full-length, high-quality video of the race had been posted and cooperatively removed after communication with our office. It was similar to coverage that we would provide on USATF.tv. There was also removed a shorter video of lower quality that was focused on the club. It was NOT (underlined in Max's letter) our intention to have that shorter video removed. Videos like this particular one, which are not commercial efforts and which seek to provide exposure to our dedicated rank-and-file, help the efforts of all of us in the sport."

I contacted Amanda Wright with Sisu and she has no idea what the full-length video referenced in the letter is. It wasn't her video. Anyone know?

It would be so like USATF to reference a made up non-existent video to cover their asses. "We weren't trying to remove this little club's video, we only wanted to remove that longer one that totally existed."

Kind of reminds me of, "We weren't trying to hire that Dennis Mitchell, it was this 'other' Dennis Mitchell."

That's a reference to 2006 when USATF made convicted doper Dennis Mitchell a USA team coach and then backtracked after backlash, saying they had meant to choose a different Dennis Mitchell who had the same name.

Not sure if this was the "longer" video, but it is of good quality:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-qmiccMD70

I'm pretty sick of of USATF's dishonesty. It's almost worse than their incompetence.

This wasn't an inadvertent mistake.

They didn't get confused about which video was being pulled.

There was significant back and forth on this issue that would have removed any doubt about what was happening. This was a conscious choice made by USATF's general counsel. Only major backlash caused them to change course.

800 dude wrote:

I'm pretty sick of of USATF's dishonesty. It's almost worse than their incompetence.

This wasn't an inadvertent mistake.

They didn't get confused about which video was being pulled.

There was significant back and forth on this issue that would have removed any doubt about what was happening. This was a conscious choice made by USATF's general counsel. Only major backlash caused them to change course.

Exactly. They will keep on issuing DMCA takedowns for personal video regardless of the fact they don't own the copyright. This time the squeaky wheel got some grease.

This is more evidence the federation doesn't have any interest in promoting the sport at a grassroots level. You can go. Just don't publish anything online.

Not Cool Bro wrote:

It's good to see USATF do the right thing here, but wow, are we bush league or what. Seriously, the CEO of USATF has to get involved in a minor issue like a random club's XC highlight video? He is issuing press releases on this? It's sad that it was worth USATF's time to take the video down in the first place, even sadder that there had to be a meeting with the "full senior leadership team" (Max's words) to get the issue rectified. A college intern should have been able to handle this BS in 10-minutes. I say again, bush league.

You have got a good point.

That is what I was alluding too when I said if the club xc nats highlights are a concern for our sport, we're in trouble.

There definitely we're other ways this could have been handled.

I can only think Max got involved with this, with a public release, because they are starting to realize how pissed off most of their membership is on the Stephanie Hightower incident. The Board (and Max Siegel) can in this one instance overrule 85% of their membership but in any representative system if you do that long enough you'll find yourself out of a job. The Board ultimately is accontable to the USATF membership and so is Max.

That youtube video "Joe Below" linked to can't be the longer video because it has been up the entire time. Max in his lengthy response says the longer video was removed.

This would be akin to Roger Goodell responding to a story about a fan's video of an arena football game being removed from YouTube.

It is so bush league it is quite frankly embarrassing.