Full detailsnaqt.com wrote:Over the winter holidays, NAQT investigated a number of unauthorized distributions of its packet sets; for the most part, these took the form of packet set trades (including some sets from the current competition year).
While looking into those trades, NAQT was surprised to find that misinformation about its distribution and licensing policies was widespread; given the critical importance of question security to tournaments and of intellectual property rights in general to question-producers, we are taking steps to correct those misunderstandings.
First, we have documented (and clarified) our policy on how materials licensed from NAQT may be distributed in a single place. There are nuances, but the gist of the policy is that questions are licensed to a program and may be shared freely within that program. Questions may not be distributed outside of the program with one exception: A tournament host may give a printed copy of the questions to each school that attends.
Second, in the spirit of treating the New Year as a time to begin afresh, we are instituting an amnesty period for the unauthorized distribution of NAQT packet sets that took place prior to January 26, 2015. Our overarching goal is to make a clean start on the issue: People won't fear punishments for past transgressions, and everybody involved should have a better understanding of NAQT's policies and actions.
In practice, the program will work as follows:
Anybody who has distributed or received packets (or other materials from NAQT, including our frequency lists) in violation of the above policy can contact us at [email protected] to tell us:
What packets they distributed or received
Who the other party in the transaction was
When they were sent (approximately)
How they were transmitted (e-mail? physical copy?)
In addition, that person needs to:
Commit to deleting any electronic copies of those packets
Commit to destroying any printed copies of those packets
(Alternatively, copies may be retained in accordance with our licensing policy if the purchase price is paid to NAQT.)
In exchange, NAQT will agree to take no punitive action for the infringement (ever). In particular, there will be no fines, no bans, no suspensions of writer accounts, no blacklisting from our championships, and so on. This promise even extends to include the distribution of "live" packet sets (those still being used for tournaments).
Note that the "no punitive action" clause only applies to people who self-report their violations to NAQT. It does not apply to the second parties in those transactions (unless they also self-report the same transaction). It also does not apply to all distributions prior to January 26, only those that are reported to NAQT before the end of the amnesty period.
The amnesty period will run for two weeks, starting on Monday, January 26. People may take advantage of it through the end of Monday, February 9.
NAQT licensing policy