General CHALEARN Contest Rule terms
December 2013
Common terms used in these rules:
These are the general official rules that govern how contest
promotions organized or sponsored by CHALEARN operate. Such a
promotion will be simply referred to as the "contest" or the
"challenge" throughout the rest of these rules.
In these rules, "organizers", "we", "our", and "us" refer to
CHALEARN and possible other sponsors; "participant", "you", and
"yourself" refer to an eligible contest participant.
SECTION 1 Contest Description
This is a skill-based contest and chance plays no part in the
determination of the winner(s). The goal of the contest is described
on the challenge website. All eligible entries received will be
judged using the criteria described on the website to determine
winners.
SECTION 2 Contest Schedule
The schedule provided on the challenge website at the beginning of
the challenge may be modified by the organizers at any time. The
registered participants will be notified by email of any change in
the schedule. To that end, they should provide a valid email.
SECTION 3 Eligibility
You are eligible to enter this contest if you meet the following
requirements:
(a) You are an individual or a team of people
desiring to contribute to the tasks of the challenge and accepting
to follow its rules; and
(b) You are NOT a resident of any country
constrained by US export regulations included in the OFAC
sanction page. Therefore residents of these countries /
regions are not eligible to participate; and
(c) You are not an employee of CHALEARN or an
employee of other challenge sponsors; and
(d) You are not involved in any part of the
administration and execution of this contest; and
(e) You are not an immediate family (parent,
sibling, spouse, or child) or household member of an employee of
CHALEARN or another challenge sponsor, or a person involved in any
part of the administration and execution of this contest.
This contest is void within the geographic area identified above and
wherever else prohibited by law.
If you choose to submit an entry, but are not qualified to enter the
contest, this entry is voluntary, and any entry you submit is
governed by the remainder of these contest rules; CHALEARN reserves
the right to evaluate it for scientific purposes. If you are not
qualified to submit a contest entry and still choose to submit one,
under no circumstances will such entries qualify for sponsored
prizes.
SECTION 4 Entry
To be eligible for judging, an entry must meet the following
content/technical requirements:
(a) Entry contents: The participants are required
to submit entries following the instructions provided on the
challenge website. To be part of the final ranking the participants
will be asked to fill out a survey (fact sheet) briefly describing
their method. There is no other obligation to publish, unless
otherwise specified on the website of the challenge.
(b) Pre-requisite: Unless specified on the website
of the challenge, there is no pre-requisite to participate,
including no requirement to have participated in previous
challenges.
(c) Use of data provided: All data provided by
CHALEARN are freely available to the participants from the website
of the challenge under license terms provided with the data.
(1) Test data:
The organizers will use test data to perform the final evaluation,
hence the participants' final entry will be based on test data.
The mode of distribution of test data is described on the website
of the challenge.
(2) Training and validation data:
The contest organizers will make available to the participants a
training dataset with truth values, and a validation set with no
truth values. The validation data will be used by the participants
for practice purposes to validate their systems. It will be
similar in composition to the test set.
(3) Post-challenge analyses:
The organizers may also perform additional post-challenge analyses
using extra data, but the results will not affect the ranking of
the challenge performed with the test data.
(d) Submission: The entries of the participants
will be submitted on-line via a web platform specified on the
website of the challenge. During the development period, the
participants will receive immediate feed-back on validation data
released for practice purpose. For the final evaluation, the results
will be computed automatically on test data submissions. The
performances on test data will not be released until the challenge
is over.
(e) Original work, permissions: In addition, by
submitting your entry into this contest you confirm that, to the
best of your knowledge:
(1) Your entry is your own original
work; and
(2) Your entry only includes material that you
own, or that you have permission from the copyright / trademark
owner to use.
SECTION 5 Potential use of entry
Other than what is set forth below, we are not claiming any
ownership rights to your entry. However, by submitting your entry,
you:
(a) Are granting us an irrevocable, worldwide
right and license, in exchange for your opportunity to participate
in the contest and potential prize awards, for the duration of the
protection of the copyrights to:
(1) Use, review, assess, test and
otherwise analyze results submitted or produced by your code (if
code submission is a requirement) and other material submitted by
you in connection with this contest and any future research or
contests sponsored by CHALEARN and other challenge sponsors; and
(2) Feature your entry and all its content in
connection with the promotion of this contest in all media (now
known or later developed);
This license does not extend to methods, algorithms, source code
used to generate your entry.
(b) Agree to sign any necessary documentation that
may be required for us and our designees to make use of the rights
you granted above;
(c) Understand and acknowledge that sponsors and
other entrants may have developed or commissioned materials similar
or identical to your submission and you waive any claims you may
have resulting from any similarities to your entry;
(d) Understand that we cannot control the incoming
information you will disclose to our representatives or our
co-sponsor's representatives in the course of entering, or what our
representatives will remember about your entry. You also understand
that we will not restrict work assignments of representatives or our
co-sponsor's representatives who have had access to your entry. By
entering this contest, you agree that use of information in our
representatives' or our co-sponsor's representatives unaided
memories in the development or deployment of our products or
services does not create liability for us under this agreement or
copyright or trade secret law;
(e) Understand that you will not receive any
compensation or credit for use of your entry, other than what is
described in these official rules.
If you do not want to grant us these rights to your entry, please do
not enter this contest.
SECTION 6 Submission of entries
(a) Follow the instructions on the challenge
website to submit entries. CHALEARN may use a third party platform
to submit and score entries ("submission plarform").
(b) Unless otherwise specified on the website of
the challenge, the participants will be registered as mutually
exclusive teams. Each team may submit only one single final entry.
We are not responsible for entries that we do not receive for any
reason, or for entries that we receive but are not functioning
properly.
(c) The participants are also subject to accepting
the terms and conditions of the submission platform chosen to submit
and score entries.
(d) The participants must follow the instructions.
We will automatically disqualify incomplete or invalid entries.
SECTION 7 Judging the entries
The board of CHALEARN will select a panel of judges to judge the
entries; all judges will be forbidden to enter the contest and will
be experts in causality, statistics, machine learning, or a related
field, or experts in challenge organization. A list of the
judges will be made available upon request. The judges will review
all eligible entries received and select the winners based upon the
prediction score on test data. The judges will verify that the
winners complied with the rules, including that they documented
their method by filling out a fact sheet.
The decisions of these judges are final and binding. The
distribution of prizes according to the decisions made by the judges
will be made within three (3) months after completion of the last
round of the contest. If we do not receive a sufficient number of
entries meeting the entry requirements, we may, at our discretion
based on the above criteria, not award any or all of the contest
prizes below. In the event of a tie between any eligible
entries, the tie will be broken by giving preference to the earliest
submission, using the time stamp of the submission platform.
SECTION 8 Prizes and Awards
CHALEARN is the financial sponsor of this contest.
(a) Prizes
Prizes as described on the website of the challenge will be awarded
as incentive prizes to boost contest participation; these prizes
will not require participants to enter into an IP agreement with
CHALEARN, to disclose algorithms, or to deliver source code to
CHALEARN. However, unless otherwise specified on the challenge
website, to be eligible for prizes, the top ranking participants are
required to publicly release their code under an Apache 2.0
license. Alternatively, they may elect another license taken
among popular OSI-approved
licenses, after consulting with the organizers. Preferred
alternative licenses include BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised"
license, BSD 2-Clause "Simplified" or "FreeBSD" license.
Additionally, they must make their code accessible on-line for a
period of not less than three years following the end of the
challenge.
(b) Travel awards
In addition to prizes, CHALEARN may distribute travel awards
according to merit and need. If travel awards are available, the
modalities of application will be specified on the website of the
challenge. The travel awards may be used for workshops organized in
conjunction with the challenge. The award money will be granted in
reimbursement of expenses including airfare, ground transportation,
hotel, or workshop registration. Reimbursement is conditioned on (i)
attending the workshop, (ii) making an oral presentation of the
methods used in the challenge, and (iii) presenting original
receipts and boarding passes.
(c) Best paper awards
If the reviewers distinguish particularly worthy papers submitted to
the proceedings of the workshop, CHALEARN may also attribute a best
paper award and a best student paper award consisting of a
certificate.
(d) If for any reason the advertised prizes are
unavailable, unless to do so would be prohibited by law, we reserve
the right to substitute a prize(s) of equal or greater value, as
permitted. We will only award one prize per team. If you are
selected as a potential winner of this contest:
(1) If your prize is not in cash, you may not
exchange your prize for cash; you may not exchange any prize for
other merchandise or services.
(2) You may not designate someone else as the
winner. If you are unable or unwilling to accept your prize, we will
award it to an alternate potential winner.
(3) If you accept a prize, you will be solely
responsible for all applicable taxes related to accepting the prize.
(4) If you are a minor in your place of residence,
we may award the prize to your parent/legal guardian on your behalf
and your parent/legal guardian will be designated as the winner.
SECTION 9 Other Sponsored Events
(1) To stimulate participation, the organizers are
making available several channels of scientific paper publication.
Publishing papers is optional and will not be a condition to
entering the challenge or winning prizes.
(2) The results of the challenge will be published
on-line on the website of the challenge. The organizers may make
additional publication arrangements that will be specified on the
website of the challenge. Several volumes of past challenge
proceedings are available in the Challenges
in Machine Learning series of Microtome.
The organizers may also sponsor other events to stimulate
participation. See the website of the challenge.
SECTION 10 Notifications
If there is any change to data, schedule, instructions of
participation, or these rules, the registered participants will be
notified at the email they provided with the registration.
If you are a potential winner, we will notify you by sending a
message to the e-mail address listed on your final entry within
seven days following the determination of winners. If the
notification that we send is returned as undeliverable, or you are
otherwise unreachable for any reason, we may award the prize to an
alternate winner, unless forbidden by applicable law.
Winners who have entered the contest as a team will be responsible
to share any prize among their members. The prize will be delivered
to the registered team leader. If this person becomes unavailable
for any reason, the prize will be delivered to be the authorized
account holder of the e-mail address used to make the winning entry.
If you are a potential winner, we may require you to sign a
declaration of eligibility, use, indemnity and liability/publicity
release and applicable tax forms. If you are a potential winner and
are a minor in your place of residence, and we require that your
parent or legal guardian will be designated as the winner, and we
may require that they sign a declaration of eligibility, use,
indemnity and liability/publicity release on your behalf. If you,
(or your parent/legal guardian if applicable), do not sign and
return these required forms within the time period listed on the
winner notification message, we may disqualify you (or the
designated parent/legal guardian) and select an alternate selected
winner.
SECTION 11 On-line notification
We will post changes in the rules or changes in the data as well as
the names of confirmed winners (after contest decisions are made by
the judges) online on the website of the challenge. This list will
remain posted for one year or will be made available upon request by
sending email to events@CHALEARN.org.
SECTION 12 Conditions.
By entering this contest you agree:
(a) To abide by these official rules;
(b) To the extent allowable under applicable law,
to release and hold harmless CHALEARN, and other sponsors, their
respective parents, subsidiaries, affiliates, employees and agents
from any and all liability or any injury, loss, damage, right, claim
or action of any kind arising from or in connection with this
contest or any prize won save for residents of the United Kingdom,
Chile, Korea, Greece, Brazil, Turkey, Hong Kong, France and Germany
with respect to claims resulting from death or personal injury
arising from CHALEARN's and other sponsors' negligence, for
residents of the United Kingdom with respect to claims resulting
from the tort of deceit or any other liabilities that may not be
excluded by law, and for residents of Australia in respect of any
implied condition or warranty the exclusion of which from these
official rules would contravene any statute or cause any part of
these official rules to be void;
(c) That CHALEARN's decisions will be final and
binding on all matters related to this contest; and
(d) That by accepting a prize, CHALEARN and
other sponsors may use your team name, your name, and your place of
residence online and in print, or in any other media, in connection
with this contest, without payment or compensation to you. The
declaration of eligibility, use, indemnity and liability/publicity
release provided to the potential winner will make reference to
obtaining his/her free consent to use his/her name and place of
residence. In any case, the lack of such consent does not prevent
the winner from receiving the prize.
(e) This contest will be governed by the laws of
the state of California, and you consent to the exclusive
jurisdiction and venue of the courts of the state of California for
any disputes arising out of this contest. For residents of Austria
only: you may withdraw your submission from this contest within
seven days of your entry. If you withdraw within seven days of
entry, your submission will be returned to you, and we will not make
any use of your submission in the future. However, you will not be
eligible to win a prize. If you do not withdraw within seven days of
entry, you will be bound by the provisions of these official rules.
For residents of the United Kingdom only: the provisions of the
contracts (rights of third parties) act 1999 will not apply to this
agreement. For residents of New Zealand only: the provisions of the
contracts (privity) act of 1982 will not apply to this agreement.For
Quebec residents: any litigation respecting the conduct or
organization of a publicity contest may be submitted to the Regie
des Alcools, des Courses et des Jeux for ruling. Any litigation
respecting the awarding of a prize may be submitted to the Regie
only for the purpose of helping the parties reach a
settlement. For residents of Israel only: this agreement does
not entitle third parties to benefits under this agreement as
defined in Chapter "D" of the Contracts Act (General Part), 1973.
SECTION 13 Unforeseen event
If an unforeseen or unexpected event (including, but not limited to:
someone cheating; a virus, bug, or catastrophic event corrupting
data or the submission platform; someone discovering a flaw in the
data or modalities of the challenge; very low participation in the
challenge) that cannot be reasonably anticipated or controlled,
(also referred to as force majeure) affects the fairness and / or
integrity of this contest, we reserve the right to cancel, change or
suspend this contest. This right is reserved whether the event is
due to human or technical error. If a solution cannot be found to
restore the integrity of the contest, we reserve the right to select
winners based on the criteria specified above from among all
eligible entries received before we had to cancel, change or suspend
the contest subject to obtaining the approval from the Regie des
Alcools, des Courses et des Jeux with respect to the province of
Quebec.
Computer "hacking" is unlawful. If you attempt to compromise the
integrity or the legitimate operation of this contest by hacking or
by cheating or committing fraud in any way, we may seek damages from
you to the fullest extent permitted by law. Further, we may ban you
from participating in any of our future contests, so please play
fairly.
SECTION 14 Sponsor
CHALEARN is the sponsor of this contest.
955 Creston Road,
Berkeley, CA 94708, USA
events@CHALEARN.org
SECTION 15 Privacy
During the development phase of the contest and when they submit
their final entries, contest participants do not need to disclose
their real identity, but must provide a valid email address where we
can be deliver notifications to them regarding the contest. To be
eligible for prizes, however, contest participants will need to
disclose their real identity to contest organizers, informing them
by email of their name, professional affiliation, and address. To
enter the contest, the participants will need to become users of the
web-based submission platform. Any profile information stored on
this platform can be viewed and edited by the users. After the
contest, the participants may cancel their account with the
submission platform and cease to be users of that platform. All
personal information will then be destroyed. The submission platform
privacy policy will apply to contest information submitted by
participants on that platform. Otherwise, CHALEARN's privacy policy
will apply to this contest and to all information that we receive
from your entry that we receive directly from you or which you have
submitted as part of your contest entry on the submission platform.
Please read the privacy policy on the contest entry page before
accepting the official rules and submitting your entry. Please note
that by accepting the official rules you are also accepting the
terms of the CHALEARN
privacy policy.