It's odd that everyone expects all the controversy to be fake - I guess that's TV for you nowadays with everything else faked. But no, all that actually happened - funnily enough it's still being very heavily discussed between the BB competitors as to what was fair and unfair.
The rules were slightly grey, but I thought pretty self explanatory "squirting glue, throwing fishing line, ball bearings and such are strictly prohibited".
I think that's pretty obvious for nets too. The biggest thing is that it also states in the rules that all weapons and components must be shown and declared during safety checks. The present with net wasn't declared and so was illegal either way.