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Why aren't Cubans, Quebecois, Saudis, Syrians allowed in Google Code Jam
- mryan 13y ago> The Contest is void in Cuba, Quebec, Saudi Arabia and Syria > and where prohibited by law. Individuals and entities > restricted by applicable export controls and sanctions > programs are ineligible to participate in the Contest Some could perhaps be explained by export restrictions on crypto code, although I would expect to see some other countries (Iran) banned if that were the case. Quebec has rather stringent data privacy laws - perhaps these are not compatible with Google's personal data storage policy.
- p_l 13y agoQuebec's case is rather their laws regarding contests, lotteries etc. Basically any contest from outside Canada won't give a damn about working all of those rules in (if it's even possible at all), so they are simply banned from essentially all international competitions of this kind :)
- TheCoreh 13y agoSince the competition is being held by a company outside of Quebec, do they need to abide to these laws at all?
- p_l 13y agoIn their interactions with Quebec residents, apparently yes.
- Mordak 13y agoIf they want to offer their contest to residents of Quebec, yes, they must abide by local laws and regulations. Running a contest in a given jurisdiction is a form of doing business in that jurisdiction, and so of course the contest is subject to whatever regulations that jurisdiction applies to that activity (contests, in this case). Imagine if this were not the case, and anybody could avoid complying with local laws just by calling their activity a 'contest' and running it out of some foreign jurisdiction. So, by saying people in Quebec can't play, Google is not required to abide the unusual laws that they have there around contests and lotteries.
- kintamanimatt 13y agoProbably, because Google has a Canadian subsidiary with offices in Montreal; they're subject to local law. If this wasn't the case they'd gladly not exclude Quebecois.
- pc86 13y agoWhy are we just making stuff up? This is not true. Contests must abide by any local laws or regulations in any jurisdiction they're run in. If you don't run the contest in Quebec (e.g. if you disallow Quebecois entrants) then and only then are you exempt from their laws.
- kintamanimatt 13y agoWe're not making stuff up. If I run a competition and someone from Belgium enters (and wins) but I have no presence in Belgium, I'm in no way subject to Belgian laws. How can I possibly be? Google doesn't have offices in Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, Chile, or South Africa. I highly doubt they're complying with local laws regarding competitions in these jurisdictions! Google are subject to Quebec's laws because they have offices there and a Canadian subsidiary. If these things weren't, they wouldn't have to abide by such laws. Even if Quebec said they had to, they wouldn't have jurisdiction.
- ubernostrum 13y agoI understand that this is something people don't get, but: yes, if you are doing something that can be construed as "doing business" in a country, then you get to be subject to that country's laws regardless of whether you have offices there or have ever set foot on that country's territory. This is not particularly new. What is new is the general belief I've seen in many people that "but I did it on the internet!" is a magical answer.
- kintamanimatt 13y agoSuch laws would be really, really difficult, if not impossible to enforce. I seem to remember there are certain laws the British government thinks applies to foreign companies that have no ties to the UK but otherwise do business with British residents, but in the same breath says they have no way to enforce them.
- HadiAsiaie 13y ago> although I would expect to see some other countries (Iran) banned if that were the case. I remembered several years ago Iranian was also banned from the competition, but after sometimes they allowed Iranian, but I think they don't give prize in the case of winning.
- DanBC 13y agoQuebec has weird laws about competitions. (http://www.advertisinglawyer.ca/advertising.htm http://www.advertisinglawyer.ca/advertising.htm) (http://business.financialpost.com/2011/09/08/why-many-contests-exclude-quebec-residents/ http://business.financialpost.com/2011/09/08/why-many-contes...)
- xradionut 13y agoI was humorously assuming it was because almost all programming languages have key words in English. The Imp of the Recursive in my head was imagining an alternate programming culture like a Quebec version of steam-punk.
- mdellabitta 13y agoI'm imagining a preprocessor now that requires you to prefix all language keywords with their French equivalents in a larger font.
- erfou 13y agothere are some public and private institutions where we can't use an english keyword for our variables and functions name.....I'm not joking!!
- JPKab 13y agoWow. I've heard that all of these "you have to use French" rules in Quebec are a reaction to years of French-Canadians in Quebec being treated as second class to the English-Canadians. Doesn't make them any less stupid.
- rayiner 13y agoI think it does. Language discrimination can be an extremely vitriolic form of oppression, and don't underestimate how much it sucks to be a second class citizen in your own country. Just look at the AAVE thread on HN a couple of weeks ago.
- skrebbel 13y agoThose crazy Quebecois are going to use the knowledge learned to nuke Toronto!
- PeterisP 13y agoUSA corporations, including Google, have restrictions on paying money to residents of certain countries such as Cuba and Syria. Tough luck.
- salmanapk 13y agoBut what about Saudia Arabia? Isn't USA friends with them?
- ronnyf 13y agoAnother example of Quebec being a totalitarian regime. A bit different from some others in this world though. A place where one can increase funding for a language Gestapo, who fines restaurant owners who don't properly translate pasta in their menu, while cutting social spending. All for the benefit of the residents. Go Quebec!
- yen223 13y agoBetter post the French translation of this rant soon, or suffer the consequences :)
- officemonkey 13y agoI'll do it for him: "Viva Quebec!"
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- JiPi 13y agoThis is not french ;)
- camus 13y agoAt least they speak better french than french people themselves ... EDIT : i'm french.
- guiomie 13y agoI dont agree. Unless you compare their (our) french to your Paris based backward french dialect.
- D9u 13y agoor anywhere that the contest is prohibited by law. That's probably why.
- xr09 13y agoOK I'm a Cuban programmer and can tell you this measure sucks big time, if the blocked government wants anything from Google Code, Sourceforge or any other "restricted" place they have mirrors, nice people on other unblocked countries willing to help and as last resource a tor proxy will do. So this measure only asserts read-only access, nothing else. Actually US goverment looks stupid when do things like this, you can't stop software to spread all over the world it's nonsense. Anyway I prefer Github, Google is not the cool company they used to be, now most of their products look like stripped-down copies of others. #ifndef HUMOR #def HUMOR I think we on the "Evil Axis" should have our own code hosting platform. Possible URL: http://evilhub.com http://evilhub.com I'm thinking in projects like: ak47-assembler missile-launcher dropbomb spy-detector nuclear-cad whitehouse-boom-boom familyguy-downloader (we love stewie too) #endif
- JPKab 13y agoDude, you made my day. I'm pretty fascinated by my Gringo stereotypes of Cuba colliding with a programmer on HN. I'm picturing a guy with a laptop, palm trees in the background, lots of antique cars driving on the street behind him, a brass band somewhere nearby, a pork sandwich on a plate. Please, please be wearing a Che/Fidel hat. In all seriousness, I'm curious about the internet situation there. How's the bandwidth these days?
- xr09 13y agoYou missed the "Havana Club" rum bottle and a mulatta. ;) Well, the internet access is a delicate topic, lots of schools have it, government offices, but not much civilians yet, they say is coming soon, but the problem is they fear technology (old people mostly), they see it as a possible way of US Gov. and Miami oppositors to take control of our minds or whatever. Old people have fears, they have their reasons, young people have ideas, we want to push forward. And is like that, some get tired of waiting for a change and go away to a more tech-savvy place, but is not an option for everyone. The bandwith is better than 5 years ago and improving, it's not wideband but we can live with that. Anyway, it sucks to have studied IT Engineering (so far, thousands of us http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Information_Science http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Information_Scien...) to end up setting up printers and not creating awesome stuff, people in charge have no faith in knowledge products. I realized a big truth reading Peopleware: The "Spanish Theory of Value" is killing us.
- caissy 13y agoAs a fellow french speaking Quebecer, this is because of the "Régie des alcools, des courses et des jeux", the main office regulating alcool, races and gambling. In our legislation, if you are making a contest with the intent of giving away more than CAD$2000, you must get a licence from them[1]. Many companies just don't want to get their head in this. The main reasoning behind this is to keep track of the contests and make sure that no one is trying to scam you. [1] http://www.canlii.org/en/qc/laws/regu/rrq-c-l-6-r-6/latest/rrq-c-l-6-r-6.html http://www.canlii.org/en/qc/laws/regu/rrq-c-l-6-r-6/latest/r...