commonsense2400

This is a demand that Jason Bryant resign immediately as a board member, officer, and member of the National Wrestling Media Association. Two major scandals have ripped into the wrestling media community on Jason Bryant's watch, centered on YouTube channels. There's no excuse. According to Jason Bryant's own words, he was not even aware of one of the popular YouTube sites for "several years" until FLOsports asked him to make a public assertion of copyright infringement against it to boost its own profit. This is despite the fact that the NWMA had recently nominated the YouTube site owner for its Photographer of the Year award (but instead gave the award to its own board member). It was his job to know. Both times. We thought he was doing his job. Both times. Under Bryant's tenure, the NWMA membership has shrunk, several colleges have left with only five remaining as members, its member list contains links that are dead or to former photographers who no longer shoot or host wrestling content, and it has recruited but a small number of new members. All of its external communication is posted under Bryant's name or authorship. Its X/Twitter account is controlled by Bryant, who has not tweeted in it since August 2023. It has no account on Instagram, the preeminent social media platform for wrestling media. Its homepage news, updated by Bryant, contains little more than basic announcements about credentialing and similar calendar-worthy items. Its annual awards are again behind schedule and there is no public list of nominees to see whom the NWMA is even aware of in the wrestling media community. Around the media community, scarcely anyone knows about the NWMA or about Bryant. There are social media outlets with more than 100,000 followers, photographers shooting prolifically, personalities building YouTube channels, and content creators of all sorts, who are never contacted by Bryant, invited to join the NWMA, or checked on. Two years ago, the NWMA awarded Photographer of the Year to a dead man, and before that, to two people who hold a seat on its board. Its most recent winner isn't in the member site list. Bryant has turned the NWMA into a small clique. Every member gets an email address at bryantwrestling.com. Its presidency is but his own personal honorific that he uses to claim relevance or authority. Which otherwise would be impossible to notice. What even qualifies him to be a member of an association for media people is imperceptible. According to his YouTube podcast channel, an episode he posted a year ago has seven views. His episode posted three weeks ago has one view. It's hard to see if anyone thinks his opinions are worth listening to. They're probably right. With so many wrestling content creators finding success or getting paid employment, Bryant seems like the biggest loser, taking the top job, and using it for little more than his own ego, or to blindly do whatever FLOsports tells him to do. Instead of expanding the NWMA and engaging members, it is impossible to tell if he is aware of anything much in the media landscape beyond the reach of his central clique and whoever other people tell him could deserve to be nominated for an award. Just as impossible to tell is if he does anything at all. Instead of watching new content creators and looking for wayward people and potential problems, when they could be corrected or excised early, he is not even aware of sites owned by his own awards nominees, allowing problems to grow into scandals that damage the entire sport. Bryant's shining accomplishment, if that, was to do the bidding of FLOsports to make copyright infringement claims that, on their face, sound completely fraudulent. He even wrote it's "illegal" for someone to upload his own videos to YouTube, without citing any law or authority. Bryant, president of a media association, appears ignorant of basic principles of copyright law that have held for decades, if not centuries. He let the NWMA be used to damage a FLOsports competitor, instead of telling FLOsports to handle its own business as a for profit corporation with in-house legal counsel. Concurrently, Bryant let FLOsports get one of its employees on the NWMA board - a for profit corporation holding a seat on an oversight body, using its position to direct Bryant to make extortionate sounding threats based on fraudulent sounding copyright claims. This egregious lapse of judgment has turned the NWMA into a bully platform for FLOsports, to the detriment of all its other members, and empowered rogue acting FLOsports employees to wage dirty war against competitors and to even assert ownership over other people's copyrights without legal authority. If Bryant expresses fraudulent copyright claims on behalf of FLOsports, he could be committing criminal conduct - defamation, extortion, racketeering - unspeakably wrong for a putative leader and chilling to the wrestling media community, fostering distrust and fear. No content creator can trust Bryant. One look from him, and he could say you're illegal, assassinate your character, steal your work and give it to FLOsports, and destroy your income. And you would know that's possible from his own published writing. Were it not for the appearance that Bryant is wholly lazy, clueless, ineffective, incompetent, and in the service of FLOsports, his actions, and lack thereof, could easily show a pattern of blatant bigotry. The complaints lodged in these two scandals could be made against any number of photographers and media outlets. In most cases, they would lead to exoneration, or lead to modifications both to coverage, and to community norms in the evolving balance between prudishness and openness. Because Bryant apparently does almost nothing, he allows scandals to form around presumably gay men, and does nothing to calm them down, adjudicate them fairly, apply equal standards to other kinds of people, or have open discussions about the different values and points of view held by diverse people and subcultures. This is blatantly discriminatory and deters the participation of anyone but people having personal attributes or values similar to Bryant's. It causes fear, causes people to hide, causes them not to speak out, and leads to scandals and mobs. It causes gay men to be afraid to voice concerns or tell what they know for fear of bigoted treatment. Most of all, it harms children. Who now is going to want to cover high school and youth wrestling? For what? To get death threats while Bryant reads them and does nothing? So FLOsports can leak rumors to Twitter accounts? Hundreds of thousands of youth are going to be without people willing to cover them. This is both because of Bryant allowing scandals to brew and mishandling them when they break. As a new scandal is breaking (or is it a lynch mob?), begging for someone with moral authority, wisdom, gravitas, diplomacy, connections, and strength to investigate facts and find answers, Bryant has been all but silent for several months, watching people threaten illegal violence, justice by tweet, FLOsports again making fraudulent sounding copyright claims, showing no rationality, calling no order, finding no answer. Who could believe that Bryant could ever have any moral authority, make any right decision, effect any solution, or even know basic facts about media and law? How could a good intentioned, respectable content producer trust this man at the helm, with Bryant letting mobs and FLOsports rule on his watch? Bryant has damaged the wrestling media community, leading to a fragmented culture of mistrust, profiteering, backstabbing, and fear. No one bears more responsibility for breaking apart the wrestling media community so that small problems grow into scandals. He has damaged the entire sport, asleep at the wheel, shirking his responsibility, letting scandals erupt that he could have prevented years ago. Or even months ago when he first became aware. The only right thing of any importance Bryant could do during his tenure is to take responsibility for his permanent and unbroken record of nothingness and failure, and resign.

Jason Bryant. It's time for you to show your moral leadership as president of your very own media association and to be called to account for your tenure. Is your title of President of the National Wrestling Media Association associated with any external duties or responsibilities, or is it an honorific title that does not require you to do anything? Do you believe threatening people with illegal violence is lawful and acceptable? Do you believe that any of the thumbnails at these links used by Tony to promote his photo albums of boys are pedophilic or suggestive? https://tonyrotundo.smugmug.com/WRESTLERS-ARE-WARRIORS/High-School-Wrestling/WALSH-IRONMAN-ALL/21-WALSH-IRONMAN https://tonyrotundo.smugmug.com/WRESTLERS-ARE-WARRIORS/High-School-Wrestling/SUPER-32/2022-S32/SUNDAY https://tonyrotundo.smugmug.com/WRESTLERS-ARE-WARRIORS/High-School-Wrestling/CA-STATE-CSHIPS-ALL https://tonyrotundo.smugmug.com/WRESTLERS-ARE-WARRIORS/High-School-Wrestling/DOC-B-TOURNEY-ALL If not, what is the difference between his thumbnails and the thumbnails YouTube selects for Gharavi and Kramer? (You called Kramer's thumbnails "suggestive screen shots"). Are you aware that YouTube limits the available screenshots a channel owner can select to a few random frames selected by YouTube, whereas Smugmug allows the owner to select any photo in the album? Do you believe Tony's promotional thumbnail showing the backside of a bent over boy in a photo of another boy whose legs are spread open is an appropriate choice given the alternatives from the same album? If so, why is it appropriate but Gharavi's and Kramer's thumbnails are inappropriate? Do you consider Tony's promotional thumbnail showing a boy wrestler grabbing another boy wrestler's crotch to be "suggestive?" If not, why is it different from Kramer's or Gharavi's thumbnails? Do you think it is appropriate to promote photos with a thumbnail of a boy wrestler in black and white with his body contours brightly lit up? If so, why is a normal video still frame randomly selected by YouTube inappropriate? Do you believe it is pedophilic or inappropriate to use a thumbnail of a boy wrestler standing up, and if so, are Tony's thumbnails of boy wrestlers standing up pedophilic or inappropriate? At any time, have you asked Tony to change thumbnails? Have you issued any advisories warning people not to credential Tony? Have you reported Tony to law enforcement? Have you reported Tony to SafeSport? To your knowledge, is Tony heterosexual, homosexual, or something else? Do you treat wrestling media people differently on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity? Do you treat wrestling media people differently on the basis of their economic relationship to or competition with FLOsports? Do you believe that people who think wrestling photos and videos like Tony's are inherently sexual or sexualized are not representative of majority consensus? According to the @iawrestle Instagram, its videos of boy and girl wrestlers have received, in some cases, over a hundred of thousand views each. For example, this video shows a young boy in a singlet, jumping up and down, not wrestling, and has 137K views: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0ZmHjYrWCf/ This video of a boy wrestling has a slow motion sequence of the boy walking with his crotch easily visible, and it has 37K views: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C04rMeavhBE/ Do you believe these videos constitute child porn, sexualization of minors, or that they "violated sports media decorum?" If not, why are they different from Kramer's or Gharavi's videos? Do you think IAwrestle is complicit in the sexualization of minors? Do you think IAwrestle cooperates with porn sites to boost its views? Why do you think its view counts are so high? Are any of the thumbnails for any of its videos "suggestive screen shots?" If not, why are they different from thumbnails on Kramer's and Gharavi's videos? Do you think FLOsports owns the copyright to IAwrestle's videos? Do you think it is "illegal" for IAwrestle to post videos that it shoots to YouTube or Instagram? Are you aware of FLOsports making any claims or allegations of copyright infringement against IAwrestle and if so what did you do in response and what was the outcome? To your knowledge, are there any people working for, owning or posting on behalf of IAwrestle who are male and not heterosexual? Have you issued any advisories warning people not to credential IAwrestle? Have you reported IAwrestle to law enforcement? Have you reported it to SafeSport? Do you treat wrestling media people differently on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity? Is it accurate that during your tenure as an officer of the National Wrestling Media Association, 100% of the do not credential advisories it published have been about men you suspect are not heterosexual? Is it accurate that during your tenure as an officer of the National Wrestling Media Association, 100% of the do not credential advisories it published have been made following a copyright infringement allegation by FLOsports? In your advisory about Kramer, you wrote, "A prominent wrestling broadcaster has brought to the attention of the National Wrestling Media Association officers that you own a YouTube Channel... They have asked us to participate in an investigation of your channel for potential copyright violations" and "It has come to the attention of the National Wrestling Media Association... video taping wrestling matches and posting them illegally on a personal YouTube channel over the course of several years." Is everything you said in the advisory true? Was the "prominent wrestling broadcaster" FLOsports? Why did you conceal the identity of FLOsports in the advisory? Why did you conceal the identity of FLOsports in your letter to Kramer? Did you not know until told by FLOsports that Kramer operated a popular YouTube channel for "several years," hosting videos shared by school media departments, athletes, parents, and many people inside the sport of wrestling? Were you the President of the National Wrestling Media Association during any of those "several years?" Did the NWMA nominate Kramer for its Photographer of the Year award before you became aware of his YouTube? In nominating him, did you ever check his websites, social media, references, or anything to ascertain what content he creates, where it was hosted, or what it was? Did you interview him and ask him what he does? What law says it is illegal for someone to post his own videos on YouTube? Cite it. If there is no such law, do you believe you committed criminal defamation as defined in the penal code of the State of Minnesota, where you live? You wrote, "The rights holder was ready to file copyright claims against the channel..." and "it is abundantly clear that the content contains... videos... are an egregious violation of copyright laws when posted to YouTube" What law says that FLOsports owns the copyright to videos created by Kramer? Cite the exact statute. Do you believe sports are a matter subject to copyright? Who do you believe owns the copyright to videos a person creates? What "laws" exactly were violated? Cite the statutes. If you cannot prove what laws were violated, do you believe that you committed criminal defamation as defined in the penal code of the State of Minnesota, where you live? You wrote, "The following was issued to Mr. Kramer by this organization (twice)..." and "it was marked private. It was taken back online several weeks later, then taken back to private again." Do you believe that making a successful threat based on a false and fraudulent copyright claim is extortion? Do you believe that an organization committing extortion "twice" at different times constitutes racketeering under the RICO Act or other racketeering statutes? Were you investigated by law enforcement for defamation, extortion, and/or racketeering, or any other cause in connection with this advisory and if so what was the outcome? Did you act alone or with the approval of other board members of the NWMA? During any of the time that the letter was issued to Kramer (twice), did an employee of FLOsports, Richard Immel, sit on the board of the NWMA? Do you believe that having its employee sitting on the NWMA board during these events caused FLOsports to be a racketeer influenced and corrupt organization? Do you believe it created a conflict of interest? Do you believe it is appropriate for a for profit corporation to sit on the board of a nonprofit watchdog and advocacy association? Why did FLOsports not make a copyright claim during this period despite the YouTube channel being active? Why did you get involved instead of telling FLOsports to handle its own business as a for profit company having in-house legal counsel, rather than using the NWMA to allege "violation of copyright laws" on its behalf and tell people not to credential Kramer? Do you think FLOsports had higher profits because of your actions? Who told you that it is illegal to post videos on YouTube, that FLOsports owns the copyright to videos shot by Kramer, that Kramer violated copyright laws, and what laws those were? Did you consult with an attorney before sending the letter to Kramer and before publishing the advisory, or was this all a DIY legal advocacy project on your part? Do you threaten, extort or engage in racketeering targeting other people? Did Richard Immel, as an employee of FLOsports, comment on any matter of legal substance, and if so do you consider that to be criminal unlicensed practice of law? You wrote, "Mr. Kramer was issued credentials as a still photographer, and had not applied for the rights to capture video and upload that content on YouTube" How do you know this? Did you get a copy of his credential application to every single event he ever shot video at over "several years?" How did you do that? How do you know what events he applied to? Do you have copies of all the agreements that he received in response to the applications? Do you still have copies of all of them? What about events that don't issue credentials but have a more informal arrangement? Are you aware that people naturally have rights to shoot video in places open to the public unless they waive that right as an expressly stated condition of entry and that the right can be restored by implied consent? What is it about YouTube that affects video rights, as opposed to any other platform or outlet? Given that schools shared his videos on social media and other outlets, do you think it is plausible that they refused him permission to shoot the very same videos? Is your statement meant to imply or allege that Kramer committed trespass at several events over several years? If your statement was not absolutely true, do you believe that you committed criminal defamation as defined in the penal code of the State of Minnesota, where you live? Regarding Gharavi: When did you first know that Gharavi operated a popular YouTube channel for several years? Were you the President of the National Wrestling Media Association during any of those several years? When did you first decide that there was suspicious content on the YouTube channel? Was this before or after a gang of employees at FLOsports decided that FLOsports owns the copyright to Gharavi's videos? Given that at least one FLOsports employee has confessed that his gang made a failed copyright infringement claim of ownership of Gharavi's videos, do you believe that FLOsports owns the copyright to Gharavi's videos? Why do you think the claim failed? Did you explain that to FLOsports? Did you do anything to protect Gharavi from a false and fraudulent claim? Do you rely on FLOsports to instruct you on copyright law, or do you have an attorney or other advisor? Have you ever told FLOsports that any copyright claim against anyone is false? Have you ever known it to make any false copyright claim and, if so, what did you do to protect the victim? Regarding yourself: What are the dates of your tenure as a board member or officer of the National Wrestling Media Association? What do you do in wrestling media that qualifies you to be a member of the NWMA? Do you publish a wrestling podcast on YouTube? Does it have 520 followers? Are these the view counts of your podcast videos: 2, 1, 8, 7, 47, 10, 4, 19, 15, 80, 37, 140, 9, 13, 22, 33, 77, 42, 32, 28, 66, 16, 16, 7? Do you think that having 7 views on a one year old podcast episode makes you a member of the wrestling media community sufficient enough to justify your membership in the NWMA and your position as president? Why do you think only one person has listened to the episode you uploaded three weeks ago? Do you operate the NWMA X/Twitter account? Does it have 590 followers? Was the last tweet posted on August 27, 2023? What do you do as President of the National Wrestling Media Association, beyond making allegations of copyright violations and illegal uploads to YouTube when FLOsports asks you to? Regarding the NWMA: How many new members has the NWMA added during your tenure as president? How many members does it have? On or about April 17, 2018, you told a reporter that the NWMA had "about 60 reporters, photographers and editors." Has membership grown or shrunk since that time? How many people have you directly invited to become members? How many members participate in the annual elections of officers? According to archive.org, on January 14, 2020, there were 40 members' sites listed on the NWMA homepage. Today, there are 40. Has there been zero net change in the number of this category of members? Why are some of the links to members' sites broken or leading to people who are former photographers who no longer host or create wrestling content? Why are only five colleges members? Do any of those SIDs participate in NWMA affairs? Do they even know they are members? According to archive.org, on January 14, 2020, there were 12 college members. Why did seven of them quit their membership with the NWMA? If you awarded photographer of the year to Levi Ventura last year, why is he not in the member sites list? In the prior year, did you award photographer of the year to a dead person? In the year prior to that, did you award photographer of the year to Richard Immel, who sits on the NWMA board of directors? In the year prior to that, did you award photographer of the year to Tony Rotundo, who sits on the NWMA board of directors? Would you consider your incarnation of the NWMA to be a tightly held clique (plus maybe one dead photographer)? Your urgent consideration of this message is important. Like if you know about a scandal, doing something about it instead of doing nothing for several months until people start making death threats. Or like because a pile of stones could be ready to throw at you, too.

OMG. Seriously, get on the phone with human resources and legal right now. I'm begging you. Just begging.

Mods, delete this account and report the ip and email address to New Jersey law enforcement immediately for investigation into possible threats of illegal violence. This conduct may constitute a crime under New Jersey law and this site may be aiding and abetting if it allows it to continue. NJ Rev Stat § 2C:33-4.1 (2022) 2C:33-4.1 Crime of cyber-harassment. 1. a. A person commits the crime of cyber-harassment if, while making one or more communications in an online capacity via any electronic device or through a social networking site and with the purpose to harass another, the person: (1) threatens to inflict injury or physical harm to any person or the property of any person

You didn't bring in legal before saying things? What says you own the copyright to somebody else's work? Who in their right mind would make legal claims and criminal allegations without checking with their company lawyers first? If your copyright claim failed, why would you say it in public without asking a lawyer why it failed and if it's safe to go public with the allegation? Flo sounds like greedy monopolists bullying competition and spreading rumors. This could be why they are usually coy and let others do the talking but this guy could be spilling the beans. Talk to human resources and legal fast. You could have created evidence you're targeting him for financial gain on false pretenses. Tell them what state you were in when you said all the things because defamation is a crime in some states and you may need extra legal advice.

It's amazing how many people are confessing that they know all about child porn sites and message boards and what's on them. What is wrong with you that you even know about these sites? Why don't you report the sites to authorities to get them shut down? How are wrestling videos a problem to you but not the real child porn that you know so much about? How is it not suspicious to you that Flo discovered a bunch of child porn sites and responded with a copyright claim instead of getting child porn sites shut down? The more likely answer is he has so few videos getting embedded on sites of any kind that he leaves the embed feature on so he can catch violators and get videos taken down the normal way, if this is even happening. Anybody could download his videos and repost them and leaving embed on is a better option because it keeps some control. Porn sites don't explain the view counts on all his videos. Youtube algorithms do. Youtube makes money by putting these videos into autoplay. That counts as a view and ad money for Youtube. It's easy to go on Youtube and let autoplay run and let several videos like these play in the background, Youtube detects that and thinks they're prime autoplay stock. His videos are the best wrestling videos, so if Youtube detects an interest in wrestling, these videos will be in the autoplay rotation. This is why some social media channels dominate and others linger and some videos go viral and others just as good never get watched. It's not about fairness or quality. Algorithms pick what's worked before and keep making it work to make money.

If you think the sport of wrestling is a simulated sex act, there is something very sick with you and you are part of the problem. None of these videos are child porn. Neither are movies and tv shows that don't have children wearing burqas. Just because someone like you can think wrestling is nudity and sex doesn't mean it is and no judge or jury will agree with you. If you want to live burqa style with the Taliban, go try it.

His thumbnails are no different than the photos on any wrestling photographer's site. Youtube doesn't allow people to pick any frame they want. That's to prevent bait and switch videos. Youtube selects a few video frames at random and those are the choices. If it's three frames of somebody walking around, the thumbnail will be walking around. People saying the thumbnails are altered are misinformed. Still frames always look off. What thumbnail should he use? ILLINIWrestlingBlog thinks the entire sport of wrestling is a simulated sex act, so he can't show a thumbnail with wrestling? A thumbnail of a person standing up has either a crotch or a butt, so that's wrong? If he zooms in close enough to cut that out he's a creep? If typical wrestling photos give you a hot flash, either you're part of the problem, or you're saying sexual attraction is a part of being human and you're too hyperfocused on it.

Child exploitation occurs uncaught in schools, churches, youth programs, for years, amidst innocent adults completely unaware of it. Pedophilia is the farthest thing in the minds of people who work among children. It's unfathomable to them. Signs and warnings, true and untrue, often get met with disbelief because the idea of pedophilia seems so wrong. That is why so much training is needed to condition people to watch for it. This guy is probably not a pedophile. He has probably worked around kids so much that he can't imagine pedophilia. He is probably a naive, stubborn, clueless person, who, in his head and heart, thinks he is doing nothing wrong, and hundreds of adults have told him that his work is amazing and treasured and to please make more. Reasonable people need to sit down with him and explain why his excellent video skills and ferocious work ethic need changes. It's too bad the purported leaders and media profiteers are resorting to extortion and violence. That speaks a lot. Instead of sitting down with the guy for a heart to heart conversation about what he can do better, they try to steal his copyright and threaten to beat him up.