Subject: ACF Newsletter III.1
Date: Thu, 26 Sep 1996 22:45:47 -0700 (PDT)
From: Gaius Gracchus <gaius@uclink2.berkeley.edu>
To: addresses <3bl13@qlink.queensu.ca>, adaswani@ucsd.edu,
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CC: quiz-bowl@csua.berkeley.edu
ACF Newsletter III.1
Sept. 96
Gaius Stern
Welcome to all new subscribers. The West Coast ACF Newsletter has about
105 subscribers - mostly in CA or TX but at least one in almost every
state west of the Mississippi. The purpose of the newsletter is to spread
information about quizbowl and to increase participation throught that
spread of information. Comments from subscribers are welcome and ads for
tournaments are always welcome free of charge. I ask that comments or
invitations be sent directly to me rather than to the entire list.
This issue contains:
This year's calendar The facts behind the licensing dispute
some detailson NAQT info on how to get free practice questions
EVENTS IN 1996-97 YEAR
The following tournaments have been scheduled:
Oct. 19 UMKC Shootout in Old West IV
Oct. 25-26 Iowa State Beautiful and Damned
Nov. 1 CAL-Berk Western Invit. IV (subtitle to be named)
Nov. 8-9 UT Dallas
Minnesota Deep Bench
Nov. 15-16 NAQT Sectionals (Various locations)
Nov. 22-23 Caltech Technophobia I
Jan. 31- Feb 1 Witchita State
Feb 1. BYU Perpetual Motion IV
Feb. 7-8 Stanford Cardinal Classic VII
WHAT is NAQT? and DOES MY SCHOOL WANT TO JOIN ?
The National Academic Quiz Tournamnet is an organization of
veteran quizbowl players who have formed their own competition to further
academic style competition between teams. The executives come from a
variety of schools with much experience playing both ACF and CBI.
Although several ACF players are active in NAQT, the two are separate
organizations. NAQT will run independent sectionals around the country in
November and a National championship in January at a rotating site.
Membership is free. NAQT does not require teams to purchase IMs
questions, although they will be available for sale in the near future.
For further questions, contact Dave Frazee at <dfrazee@umich.edu>
WHAT IS THE COPYWRITE ISSUE? DOES MY TEAM OWE CBI A LICENSING FEE?
The issue is simply this. CBI made a claim that they owned
copywrite protection for the format of their game. By American law, the
format of the game can not be protected by copywrite (patent, maybe ... )
so the claim was in the least, inaccurate. CBI does, however, own
copywrite to every question they produce, every scoresheet, and every
printed set of rules. Their rules are probably protected, as well.
Use of these materials without express permission (possibly entailing a
fee) is ILLEGAL.
CBI can not claim rights to the idea of two teams playing one
another for points by answering questions. Any tournament that avoids
use of CBI's scoresheets, exact rules, or questions owes NOTHING. If your
team hosts a tournament and writes all its own questions or uses freshly
written submissions, your own scoresheets, and a set of rules authored by
your team, by ACF, or a reliable outside source, you are within the
confines of fair use by law. You will owe nothing.
ACF does not require the payment of a licensing fee for the use of
its rules or format.
HOW CAN MY TEAM GET FREE PRACTICE QUESTIONS?
(courtesy of John Edwards)
Players have set up an FTP site on the WWW from which you can download
thousands of free questions. By tapping into the ftp site, one can
download a large number of free questions posted by tournament hosts in
previous years. Please DO NOT ever use these questions as your own
submissions to an invitational tournament.
A) it is unethical to pass them off as your own work
B) Everyone else has had a chance to see them too. The questions are NOT
clean!!! Feel free to use them as practice questions, but for nothing
else.
If you have not used anonymous ftp before, this is how it goes:
get on internet and go to:
http://www.papyrus-inc.com/college-bowl
You will be prompted for a username. Type "anonymous".
You will then be prompted for a password. A password is not necessary,
but the standard practice is to type your e-mail address (which then gets
logged in the syslog, I believe).
ftp> cd /group/college-bowl
ftp> ls
You will then have a number of directories to choose from. For
example you can choose the 1993 ACF regionals (held at Chicago)
acfreg2.93 (ACF Chicago, 2/93).
ftp> cd acfreg2.93
ftp> ls
You then should have a file called README (which lists the schools,
and maybe someday will have final results and individual standings), and
a number of compressed files (i.e. ending in .Z). Each file contains
the toss-ups and boni of a particular team.
If you want all the sets, type:
ftp> binary
ftp> mget *
Because you put the "-i" in the first line up above, the program will
not keep asking you whether you want files; it will assume you want all
of them and will send them all back to your system.
[Note: If you _want_ to be asked sometimes, omit the -i. You
can then toggle confirmation at will by typing:
ftp> prompt
-- pkh]
ftp> quit
your system> uncompress *
And voila, you have a number of tourney sets, ready to use for your
next practice.
- - - - - - - -
Gaius Stern
ACF Newsletter editor