Windows Phone Thoughts: Nixing the raffle concept

Due to the incredibly complex legal hoops I would have to jump through, the raffle idea I had simply won't work. The risk of going ahead with it and having a disgruntled raffle loser or a competitive webmaster report me is too great - I have no desire to spend two years in jail (the penalty in Canada). It's pretty upsetting to me, because as a concept it seemed great - everyone was so excited! Not having any knowledge about raffles, I wasn't aware that they were made illegal in the US and Canada quite a few years ago.

I find it so disheartening that we can have a great idea, a lot of enthusiasm, the desire to make it fair for everyone, yet have the concept killed due to fear of legal reprisal. Lawyers have ruined the world. Except for Marlof and any lawyers reading this site of course. It's all those OTHER lawyers that did it!

The idea of buying the device then putting it up on ebay has quite a bit of merit - I'd likely only lose 5-10% of the value of the item, and if someone from this site were to buy it, perhaps even less. I'll consider it for next time. Thanks so much for your enthusiasm and support, but it doesn't appear like this is realistic.