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
(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!
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(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.