iScorecast Question with 'Discoved' Team

[cfm56dash7]

I recently scored a series of games for a USSSA baseball tournament my son's team attended. Some of the teams had roster data available through the USSSA site and rather than just poach that data and hand enter it into the team roster page, I used the Discover Game feature of the Game Manager/Add Game screen. I used the Discover feature for the two pool games that we knew we would play, but I ended up just creating the bracket play game out of whole cloth. In short, I have games scored that were discovered and a game where I created it locally on my iPad.

The games scored normally and this was our first tourney of the year so I hadn't told the other parents about the joys of iScorecast, etc. Weeks later, I introduced them to iScorecast and created one of the iScorecast Scoreboard 'tapes' for the team web page. The tape scrolls back and forth and shows the viewer what games have been scored for our team this season and what the final score was. If you click on an individual game score, it will take the viewer to an iScorecast of that game. This is great, because I don't have to send out individual emails telling folks about the iScorecast link for each game. "Go to the Scoreboard tape," I tell them, "It's one-stop shopping!"

The problem is the games that were scored for which the 'Discover Game' feature was used. When I click on those games, the browser loads the expected background for the iScorecast but then I get a big banner that says, "Game Pass Required! Viewing live Scorecasts requires a USSSA Game Pass purchase." http://data.iscorecentral.com/iscorecas ... de145a1eeb The game pass requires me to download an app and then pay $5 for a week's access (in-app purchase). I'm flabbergasted. I don't recall USSSA standing at my elbow (in the cold rain and the wind) scoring the game. I am not an USSSA employee, contractor or anything else. What gives them the right to control the output of my scoring efforts? Does this not reduce me to some sort of unpaid servitude? Don't worry, some very warm places will freeze over before I give USSSA any money for access to my own iScorecast.

I suspect that I could bypass all this by re-scoring the games in question without using the Discover trick, but I can say that what USSSA has done makes me very angry. The Discover feature, at least for associations that are charging a fee to access your own data, should come with some sort of warning that you are sending your iScorecast into a black hole and they are going ransom your seeing it again. If they want to monetize something, perhaps they could charge a fee for access to rosters; that would be upfront and transparent. As it is, it's just underhanded.

Does Discovering a game mean you relinquish control over your own iScorecasts? Why would iScore design it this way?

If you'd like to see this for yourself, go to: http://www.rippersbaseballclub.com/page ... lack-2016-, scroll around the black tape at the top of the home page and select the games for 3/12/2016 (pool play with Discover Game feature) and 3/13/2016 (manually created).

[FTMSupport]

When you use Discover Game from USSSA, a note appears in bright yellow at the bottom of the screen that talks about USSSA scorecasts. That is the tradeoff for them making the Discover Game option available. They mostly use it for their own scorekeepers scoring tournaments.

You can use the Discover Team option from USSSA, and it does not come with this same restriction.

[OhioTex]

This was an informative post .. I had no idea . Now I and others know.
I understand the USSSA perspective and IScore partnership .

What happens if you data share the game to a different device . Does the restriction transfer too ?


One of the big difference between Iscore and GC was who owns the data and rights . The scorer ..

[FTMSupport]

If the Game is discovered from USSSA, the Scorecasts have to be viewed with the USSSA viewer app. This is a new option, and is mostly intended for the USSSA scorekeepers to use. They supply scorekeepers for their major events and there is an app specifically for watching their games.

As noted, you can still use Discover Team from USSSA and do the iScorecasts as they have always been done.