from the ADC faq :
http://code.google.com/android/adc_faq.html
Who's eligible to participate?
* The Android Developer Challenge is open to individuals, teams of individuals, and business entities. While we seek to make the Challenge open worldwide, we cannot open the Challenge to residents of Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Sudan, and Myanmar (Burma) because of U.S. laws. In addition, the Challenge is not open to residents of Italy or Quebec because of local restrictions.
i really can't understand why *italy* and *quebec* are excluded from competion :-(
Can anyone explain this ? |
Are you from Italy Luca ? I don't know if I can participate : I'm French but temporary resident in Quebec... Well I still have an address in France... |
(I've asked Google why they exclude Italy and Quebec and will post their answer here, if they reply.) |
It's been discussed in the development forum at some length – essentially it's down to local laws that make it untenable for Google to run a competition there.
http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers/browse_thread/thread/c8f28a26970f6421/4850614fc7b68de2#4850614fc7b68de2 |
Google press says that for legal reasons they don't want to comment on why Italy is excluded (the most specific they get is "Due to specific local laws around these types of programs, we were not able to open the Challenge to residents of Italy or the province of Quebec in Canada at this time"), though they point to:
http://weblogs.java.net/blog/fabriziogiudici/archive/2007/11/google_android.html
Quote from that post by FabrizioGiudici:
<<You might wonder what are those "local restrictions". Well, for my country:
* prizes must be assigned in presence of a notary public and a representative from an acknowledged consumer association;
* prizes that are not delivered (for any reason, including recipient not picking them) must be donated to some non-profit organizations, explicitly listed in the contest rules;
* there are some papers to fill in and the contest must be registered to two different Ministries (you know, in Italy there are a lot of Ministries, sometimes it's hard to understand who's doing what) and to the State Monopoly Administration.
But above all:
* the entity which is organizing the contest must guarantee in advance a security deposit covering the whole value of prizes.
... the last point would mandate that Google froze $10M in some bank account to "guarantee" that prizes will be really delivered (even though it's extremely unlikely that all the prizes are delivered in Italy).
I realize that, in Google's shoes, I'd take the same decision and exclude Italy from the contest. You give up with a small fraction of the potential targets, but you're freed from such a crazy bureaucracy.>> |
If Google doesn't promote the contest in Italy, and just mails out a prize from the US, I don't see how Italian laws can force Google US to refuse to accept entries from Italy.
Maybe they just "voluntarily" agreed to do it. |
It is common for rules to exclude Quebec.
Here is a Quebec document "Rules respecting publicity contests".
http://www2.publicationsduquebec.gouv.qc.ca/dynamicSearch/telecharge.php?type=3&file=/L_6/L6R3_1_A.htm |
