Who owns what tournament?

[Lucifer]

@joda: The conflict was resolved, but I think the fundamental question of who owns a particular tournament is worth discussing.

When it was the AFL, I think I "own" the name "AFL". It's mine, I dreamed it up, I ran the league, so if anybody wants to run another AFL, they need to ask me. I have certain requirements I'd like to see fulfilled that people generally expect from a league called AFL.

But that doesn't mean nobody can come along and run a similar league, it just means they can't call it AFL. They can even have different requirements to set for people to reasonably expect that can be better than mine! It's up to whoever does it.

Whenever Durka ran it, he ran it with my blessing and oversight. I didn't actually *do* much, but he did come to me from time to time with questions, and I gave him answers. So he didn't hijack it, he asked me if he could run it because there was a demand for it.

I think that convention should be followed! The only real exception to it is the TRONIC stuff, because that stuff is, by definition, player-organized. But for all these other tournaments, I think whoever created the tournament, unless he/she explicitly puts its name in the public domain, continues to own it, and anybody wanting to start a new tournament with the same name has to get permission. If you don't want to do that, you can always clone the tournament and run it under a different name. I don't see a problem with that at all.

Permission might be conditional. For example, one of the things that people loved in the AFL was that 2v2 in the fortress zone was unconquerable. So if somebody wants to run an AFL with LADLE settings, I wouldn't give permission. AFL is different that way.

I don't know where FFF stands in there. My understanding was that epsy and someone else worked on the original, and when it was over, epsy was considered the "owner" of the tournament.

I'd hate to make this comparison, but compare it to clans. If individuals can't own the names they create, then I can go start my own SP clan, right?

On the subject of clans, though, I have to say I wouldnt' mind if a clan wanted to run their own AFL, branded with their clan name, i.e. CT-AFL. There's a name change there already, and people participating will know it's a CT event, not a Lucifer event.

[Concord]

For example, one of the things that people loved in the AFL was that 2v2 in the fortress zone was unconquerable. So if somebody wants to run an AFL with LADLE settings, I wouldn't give permission. AFL is different that way.

Ladle settings have the zone unconquerable as well

I just don't understand why people get there panties in such bunches over people taking their stagnant ideas. Its not like any of us are making money off of them. But whatever, thats just my note in passing. Assume if I create a tournament or something, and then I stop running it, you can steal and hijack it all you want.

[Z-Man]

Lucifer: I'd agree there, but only for non-generic names. Spoon and Ladle qualify as non-generic, and if 2020 would claim them as his own, it'd be his right. Generic names are up for grabs provided
- the people organizing the last event with that name have abandoned or neglected it
- it is stated that there is no direct connection between this event of that name and the last one
Furthermore, AFL, TST and FFF are descriptive names. Any event fitting the description should be able to use that name under the stated conditions. The community will take care of the distinction in those cases; they'd call the AFL Lucifer ran Lucifer's AFL and the next one <insert name here>'s AFL.

[Hoax]

As flex said the FFF was infas idea & us from x discussed it's organisation etc.. I think he'd be laughing at all the fuss around who's going to run it & what not
It makes sense to use http://fff.armagetron.co.uk/ as it's a nice resource to have & thus points at epsy to organise it, which I know he had plans to organise a 2nd one around now
If this tourney was done via the wiki & had no obvious main organiser, I don't think there would be any big discussion.
Some people avoid other peoples' toes, some people step on them anyway & others dont see them at all.

[joda.bot]

@z-man: thx, I think. You explained a good way to categorize "names" (IMHO). At first I thought Lucifer was all in favor of Copyright and DRM , but I guess it's just different perspective of the z-man's description.

@hoax: I like the "toe"-analogy. What happend here is that compyguygene listened to one peer group and unintentionally stepped onto epsy's toes without intending to do so. From my perspective only miscommunication because epsy did not state his FFF-Licensing-Terms and compguy just wanted to do good to another community which objected to foreign (european) influence (also he has not as much expierence with fff tournaments as epsy) ...

Epsy fff is for you under Creative Commons, Derivative Works please ask the author ?

[compguygene]

ok, let me explain a few things...
I have spent a total of almost 4 hours chatting on irc and AIM with joda.bot and epsy about this.

This tournament will be run like it was in the past...excuse my stupidity in trying to change much at all.

Epsy and i have discussed some modifications that i would him to make to the original fff website. He is also going to create a forum for the tourney that i will be able to admin. The plan is to go live with sign-ups April 12 for a tournament to be held May 10. The tournament will be quarterly or 4 times a year. It will use the settings epsy originally developed for fff.
To help set up the admins for the tourney, epsy is getting me set up with the tst infrastructure that he has set up.
In other words, I am not going to ruin the fine setup that he has created!

Also, I now have 2 Virtual Private Servers, one in Connecticut, US and one in Germany. So, I can host many of the servers for a tourney like this...and others too! If anyone wants to see how the settings play, there are 2 servers out there with the actual FFF settings:
The Server Pharm: FFF Alpha
The Server Pharm EU: FFF Bravo

Both servers have been play tested, and work well. Also, German users get reasonable performance in the Alpha server and East coast and Midwest US users get reasonable performance in the Bravo server. More than that has not been tested.

Please share any feedback you may have about the settings, performance, servers, or quite frankly anything else.

I apologize for any misunderstandings and confusion that I have caused in the community, my only intention, is to do this right. I think that I may now be on the right track.

[Lucifer]

@z-man: thx, I think. You explained a good way to categorize "names" (IMHO). At first I thought Lucifer was all in favor of Copyright and DRM , but I guess it's just different perspective of the z-man's description.

Eeek, I thought you liked me!

This same controversy rose up in baseball back in the day. There was first the American League, then there were some teams taht weren't in the American League and had somewhat different rules. The National League was formed from that. Nowadays, the World Series is the two champions from each league playing against each other. The AL team gets to use their rules, and the NL team gets to use their rules. There are differences! In the American League, the pitcher is allowed to bounce his ball on the ground. I don't believe that's allowed in the National League. (It's considered a ball either way, but it's done to trick the batter into swinging at something he can't hit, trying to draw a strike, because even if it's a ball, if the batter swings and misses, it becomes a strike) Also, in the American League, the pitcher doesn't have to bat, he has a permanent pinch hitter. In the National League, the pitcher has to bat with the rest of his team.

Anyway, there was a fight over the names back in the forming days of these two leagues, and if you ask me, they're both generic names.

@compuygen: We've changed the topic to a general discussion of competition ownership, you dont' have to defend yourself anymore.

Wrestling had a similar controversy, only not as interesting (because wrestling isn't that interesting). So I think there's a lot to be said for generic names not being that generic.

I agree that "Armagetron Fortress League" is fairly generic, but it covers a specific type of competition. Similarly, Team Sumo Tournament is fairly generic. I just think that, in the absence of a real connection between a new tournament that's like a previous tournament, it should get a new name. Adding something is fine. So I could from "Lucifer's Team Sumo Tournament" and do whatever I want, but if I want to create a "Team Sumo Tournament", I need to go find Durka and seek his blessing and try to run the same tournament he ran. I can make changes to make my life easier, but from the point of view of the players, if I say it's TST, then it needs to play more or less the same as previous TSTs. But if I say it's Lucifer's TST, then it can play however I want it to.

@Joda: I dont' oppose copyright in general, I oppose using copyright explicitly prevent the free flow of information. Copyright is all about enabling the free flow of information in a way that provides economic incentives for people to create/distribute information. When it fails to accomplish that goal (as it does with software, music, and movies nowadays), then it needs to be rethought. But I agree with the fundamental principles.

Finally, there's a difference between using a previous name in a way that's unfamiliar to players and blatantly hijacking a tournament. Back when I was organizing the first AFL, there was a player who jumped in and tried to take over, saying it was a community-organized competition. I told him it wasn't community organized, it was organized by me, with feedback from the people playing. We had quite an argument, it was kinda fun. That's very different. If someone really wanted to run their own AFL, and I wasn't doing anything, there isn't much I could really do to stop them. But if I was already organizing an AFL, and someone jumped in and took over, that's totally wrong. That's "taking", and I tell my kids all the time "you don't take".

[Z-Man]

/me repeats for Lucifer:

- the people organizing the last event with that name have abandoned or neglected it

That was not the case in the Baseball or Wrestling examples (if it's the WCW vs. WWF split or of course the renaming of WWF when the World Wildlife Fund complained), so the original event had all the right in the world to keep its name and tell the fork to go create its own name. Even with generic names, there's some variation. TST could become Sumo For Two, FFF could become Squad Fortress. AFL could just as well be just FL or FLA or Round Robin Fortress. However, I see no reason to force people to such a random shift if they take an old and tested, but abandoned, formula and revitalize it. Maybe they should slap a 'New' or 'My' in front of it for the first new iteration, but that's just a matter of taste.

[joda.bot]

Should we put anything about this in the wiki ?

We might make a recommendation that tournaments are customized with "by Compguygene" or "Epsy's fff" if the name should be protected ? The addition owner's name should make the tournament name non-generic.

If some tournament name is public domain or selforganised (by players) then no change is neccessary. "the Spoon" and "the Ladle" are selforganised but not named after the game mode (Fortress)...

From my perspective the authors/contributers of Armagetron-Wiki: Ladle "own" the names "the spoon", "the ladle" ?

EDIT: Should we split *this topic*?

@tank I suggest to split this topic at
http://forums.armagetronad.net/viewtopi ... 810#204810

[Tank Program]

Split.