Given the passion, emotion and, at times, justifiable disappointment, Copa Freestyle felt it is time to address many of your questions, comments and concerns regarding The Copa Challenge – the industry’s first and truly global online contest (with visitors from 115 countries).

Basically and through no fault of our own, our world-class techies have discovered that there may have been tampering with the voting system by creating ‘proxy’ email accounts, which were potentially used to increase the voting count on several entries. In addition, we have also noticed that on numerous occasions certain voters have given contestants the lowest possible score in order to lower their overall average.

To be fair to everyone, we are not 100 percent certain but there is enough evidence and data that we, as the Contest Manager, must take corrective measures in order to ensure complete and utter fair play for everyone’s benefit. Therefore we have decided to do the following:

1. Contest Extension: We are hereby officially extending The Copa Challenge up to approximately 12:00am (EST), July 4th, 2011 (‘Closing Date’).
2. Judging Criteria: The selected winners in each category (best video and best picture) will be selected by using a simple formula that allows the Judges to have 70% of the vote and the voting public will have the remaining 30%. Given the quality and experience of our Judging Panel we feel this provides the best-effort solution.
3. Final Selection: On or around the Closing Date and based on the Judges’ recommendations we will post the top 10 selections for both categories (videos and pictures), after which we will open the final voting to the public for up to 2 weeks followed by the official announcement of the selected winners.
4. Rules: Please note that as the Contest Manager, we reserved the right to change the Rules (“Official Rules are subject to change”) in order to ensure everyone has a fair shot at winning.
5. Communiqués: If you have the need to communicate or comment on the action taken by us feel free to send your inquiries to: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

We hope everyone appreciates our position and motives and look forward to a successful and fair conclusion.