3) The addressed issue regarding signups is a valid one until you realize that their are several counter arguments which you are seemingly ignoring in principle due to the assuming you are basing point "A" off of. By saying that sign ups are valid upon immediate posting and thus the player is now involved in the tour you must now consider anyone who deletes their signup post retracting from said tour as causing a large enough problem to justify possible infractions or bans from tournaments. I admit that this is a jump but by making each signup valid upon immediate posting this a legitimate situation you are faced with under current rules that if someone "Cancers" off a team they receive a swift tour ban and possible SPL ban for life (See gr8astard catching the ban). I do not understand what instance you are referring to where retains have been deemed valid before sign-ups are closed and would like further evidence to support this claim before bothering to address it.
This was posted by old head TD Teal about retains:
C) The underlying asset (player) of the retain must have validly signed up in order for the retain to be exercised
E) Player registration can only take effect in the following circumstances:
E1) The player has a valid sign up, a team that owns his retain right decides to exercise that right and the player has agreed. The team in question must not have broken any applicable retain rules (i.e. activating more than 3). Applicable periods for the valid signup are after the initial signup thread is posted until its close, and after the midseason signup thread is posted until its close.
It explicitly says that in order to retain players, the sign up of the player must be valid.
If sign ups were not considered valid until signups thread close, retains would not happen until then because no sign up would be valid yet.
The tournament host (QQ) considered Tricking sign up and my retain as valids, and all those actions happened before the case was presented to TDs.
So the facts are the following:
a) Trade, retain and player confirmation happened before the ban (QQ can confirm, and I can also send screens of the times)
b) Tricking was officially a shark before his ban. In order to be on a team your sign up must be valid
There are also no precedents of bans nullifyng a sign up that had been considered valid, especially when its a short ban. There are multiple examples of the opposite, Omfuga being one. Valentine was allowed to finish his OST when he got banned. Dice was banned for posting a pastebin with rey's team and he was able to continue playing SPL after his ban ended. Tiba joined someone else game and got banned for 3 weeks, and he was allowed to continue playing in SPL.
Btw, we would be fine with not being able to use Tricking for 1-2 weeks because of his ban