Breaking the law?
Ok, so a particularly observant viewer noted the giveaway that I had announced for paid members of the channel - and he pointed out that there could be legal issues with it.
Looking into it, I found that a giveaway becomes an illegal lottery if it has all three of the following:
a prize (there are 4 prizes)
chance (which a raffle definitely is)
consideration (which one could interpret membership being - although there’s no direct tie)
The remedy is not to call it off. That would be stupid.
The remedy is to open the contest to everyone. That will get me legally compliant, by removing criterion 3.
So, how this will work is that anyone that wants to enter can email me their entry. All you need to do is send an email with the word “raffle” in the subject.
If you are not a member on Patreon or YouTube, you will be entered with a ticket. If you are, you will entered with the number of tickets that correspond to your donation level x 10. Put another way, Interns will be entered with five tickets, each, while 10x Engineers will be entered with 50 tickets, each.
If you're in the continental US, I will ship the prize to you at *my cost*. If you're outside the continental US, I will contribute $5 to the shipping costs. If you wish to refuse the prize, I will have drawn extra names as alternates.
Apparently, I also have to specifically mention that YouTube is not a sponsor (they’re not).
