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posted by
cmn32480
on Monday January 08 2018, @03:34PM
from the 1-in-365,214,231-chance-of-getting-the-good-stuff dept.
from the 1-in-365,214,231-chance-of-getting-the-good-stuff dept.
Loot boxes in video games give the player a random item, perhaps a weapon or a skin, typically in exchange for payment. Should they be viewed as a legal sweepstakes or as an illegal lottery? This video examines the legal issues and explains how loot boxes could be structured to avoid running afoul of gambling laws (which vary by state) in the U.S.. The video concludes that many current implementations of loot boxes are really illegal lotteries, and conjectures that major game companies use them anyway because the risk of being prosecuted isn't enough to dissuade them.
Previously: Belgium Moving to Ban "Loot Boxes" Throughout Europe, Hawaii Could Restrict Sale to Minors
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Are Loot Boxes in Games a Violation of Gambling Laws?
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If bankers can count, how come they have eight windows and only four tellers?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday January 08 2018, @09:01PM (6 children)
Laws might not be primarily to protect the person you think is being protected -- but rather to protect the rest of us from the consequences of their life failure. This might be true whether we are talking about (A) a law to protect from one's own stupidity or (B) a law to protect from being conned or taken advantage of by another.
We already have plenty of (B) type laws already.
Laws of type (A) protect us in a couple possible ways. One is from crime from someone who becomes too poor to eat and would turn to robbery. Or who is to fixated on getting their next fix and would do just about anything to achieve that goal regardless of harm to life or property, including their own. Or someone who becomes so poor that society decides to create some kid of welfare or public assistance rather than see the alternatives I have just mentioned.
The core problem is that "free human beings" are not free to do anything they want. They have to live in a world with other people. That means some restrictions on what one can do that affects others directly or indirectly. If they don't like that, then they need to find a place to be free where the consequences cannot possibly affect anyone else. Or society tries, perhaps unsuccessfully, to create such places, with names like "Toxic Waste Overlook Prison" or "Happy Halls Insane Asylum".
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 08 2018, @10:05PM (2 children)
Is there some reason you chose to conflate stated intent of a law with the consequences of the law? Civil asset forfeiture in drug cases doesn't protect anyone from the scourge of drug addicts or their dealers, but it does generate an ample revenue stream for an avaricious police force. It doesn't protect us, but that's one of the pretexts for the existence of that sort of law.
Fine sentiment except that nobody is saying let's make theft and fraud legal.
Who gets to decide that you deserve a padded cell?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday January 08 2018, @11:00PM (1 child)
I wasn't thinking about civil asset forfeiture in anything I was writing. But that is a great example of a law having very unintended consequences. (Or were they perhaps intended?)
I had mentioned prisons and threw padded cells in at no additional charge. We seem to do it today. We decide that someone should get a padded cell as an alternative to prison if they are doing things that the rest of the population they must live with thinks that their exercise of their freedom is too harmful to everyone else. . . . but mooooom! I want to be a cereal / serial killer and enroll in AP courses for it!
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 08 2018, @11:44PM
So why are you equating libertarianism with AP courses for serial killers? I'm not quite seeing the connection myself. I'm pretty most libertarians would be on board with keeping serial killing illegal.
The point is saying that laws protect us, when they often don't is part of the problem. Just like speaking of governments as competent and not corrupt when they often aren't. Libertarianism and similar philosophies would be nonexistent, if the world were good enough that one didn't have to worry about these sorts of things.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 08 2018, @10:34PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday January 08 2018, @11:06PM (1 child)
There are examples where I feel likewise. TSA is a great example.
And here is another example. I am willing to give up freedom to take certain drugs (eg, meth, heroin) when they seem to be related to large harms to other people that follow.
Now . . . we seem to have a large problem with prescription opiod drugs. Yet some people take them occasionally, responsibly and without any problems.
So it's easy for me to demonize certain things, say certain drugs, for example. Or shops that sell skateboards and related criminal paraphernalia -- even though there are people who skateboard responsibly, don't cause destruction to other public / private property, etc.
Too bad I can't wave my magic wand and solve all the world's problems.
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(Score: 1) by Barenflimski on Tuesday January 09 2018, @05:18AM
Anything "easy" should be banned. If you act like that, the world ends up like that. It starts with you. Think about it.