Time Warner Inc.’s AOL announced their new “Action Sports” web site, Lat34, which is billed as “MySpace for 12- to 34-year-old male BMX-riders and snowboarders”, last month around the time of the first Dew Tour stop. They also cover skateboarding and freestyle motocross.

I looked through the site quite a bit to see if there was anything worth while to link to or write about for my etnies gig. They have video clips from almost every rider’s run at the Dew Tour, which is pretty cool. And it turns out that Twitch has a blog on the site, too. Sweet, I hope he’s raping them for a nice payday.

While browsing the site, I came across this news item about Brian Deegan’s return to outdoor motocross. After a double take, I thought to myself “weird, that sounds really familiar”, and then I see their link to etnies. I looked around for the original post, and, lo and behold, it’s the same thing, word for word, that I wrote in the etnies moto blog! It’s one thing to use the news you read at another site and comment on it, add your two cents and link to it. But word for word!?!?!? I can just imagine them copy and pasting straight into the Lat34 CMS, pressing Submit, and sitting back to sip a latte while feeling satisfied with their hard day’s work. WTF!? Is that even legal? I don’t know. Is it lame? Hell Yes!

What I do think is going to be pretty cool is this Vital MX (and BMX & Skate) site that will be launching soon. From what I hear it will be like the MySpace for the action sports fan kinda thing that AOL wants to be, but with real news and content from motocross (and hopefully some fmx?). Judging from the blog that GuyB is doing before Vital even launches, it’s already better than Lat. Here’s to the little guy that actually knows, respects and supports the sports we love in a good way… not the content piracy and corporate BS adverts targeting the “pivotal” “action sports” audience that you will find at Lat34.

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