I was reading the official rules for a Publisher's Clearing House contest (you know, cuz that's the sort of thing I do when I'm bored, or at work) and I ran across this:
In the event a winner from one of our promotions comes from Canada, a skills test must be successfully completed in order for the winner to claim the prize.
At first I thought it was cuz we didn't think Canadians were smart enough to win prizes or something. Dude, talk about being conceited, America. But then, after further research, I found this:
Under the Criminal Code, it is illegal to hold a lottery without a licence. Giving away a prize based on chance alone — a random draw, for instance — is considered a form of lottery. The contest industry invented the skill-testing question to get around that restriction. If a contest includes an element of skill, it is no longer considered purely a game of chance.
“It’s a loophole, basically, and to the best of my knowledge Canada is the only country that has that requirement,” said Toronto lawyer Brenda Pritchard, who is co-authoring a book called Advertising and Marketing Law in Canada that devotes an entire chapter to contests.
It's ok, the skills test is a simple math problem that only requires you to remember the order of operations.
2 * (18-4) + 4 = ?
Then again, that probably poses a big problem for a lot of people. Oh, well, more chances for me I guess. ...not that I enter this kind of stuff...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment