So I'm interested in running a competition to promote my site, the only requirements at this stage will be to register on my site (if not already) and complete the entrant form giving details like email and location (which are already used as part of registration, full name and address only required by the contest winner in order to send the prize). I will use my site's Privacy Policy and probably create an additional one just for this. I was also thinking of making it a requirement to opt-in to my sites newsletter (must opt-in for the duration of the competition, they are free to opt-out whenever they want but contest entry will become void if opt-out early) - I don't actually run a newsletter but have a system in place incase I decide to in future. I live in Scotland so personally I must abide by Scots Law, law of the United Kingdom, and law of the European Union. My site is hosted in United States (I believe Texas, it's HostGator I'm using) so it obviously must abide by their laws, I'm aware of some US jurisdictions having tight regulations with things like gambling. The prize will be a game, to make things simple I'll probably pre-order the software online at a regional distributor near the contest winner's location and have it delivered to their provided address. What - if any - legal issues am I going to run into? I would like to make this a regular thing which is why I'm concerned about this. I'm not doing it to make a profit (although I'm certainly interested in ways to monetise it) and the full name and address provided will be deleted once the item is shipped. Should I restrict which jurisdictions are permitted to enter and is there any competition registration I must adhere to in order to run this, and should I be concerned more with Scots/UK/EU laws as that's where I am, or the US because that's where the data is? (If the US, would I be able to download the data and store it on my own machine and delete from the server so that the data is thereby held here?) and any legal issues with the newsletter? (I won't spam or anything, and again they are free to opt-out whenever they want) Sorry for so much text lol EDIT: Just to clarify what I said about interested in monetising it, at no point will user data be sold or transmitted to anyone else, it will be my eyes only with the exception of passing the user's name and address to the distributor to send the prize. I will be paying the full £40 or whatever the cost is, there are no sponsors involved.
It doesn't sound like you'd run into any serious issues. Just make it clear about the newsletter opt-in and opt-out, contest privacy policy and a requirements to enter/win then you should be set after that.
Thanks, I was actually thinking to keep it less-restrictive, they sign-up* (for anti-spam/cheating) and enter, and if they sign up to the newsletter as well then they're credited with another entry, and perhaps another credit for helping promote the contest via social networks. I've looked up a few things, found some advise that helped with telling the difference between different types of competitions and which regulations they fall under, according to that this is closest to the regulation for lottery but doesn't squarly fall under it as there's no material cost to entry (if someone knows of laws contrary to this please let me know). Either way I followed the steps for that regulation, most of it I was going to do anyway. The only other thing left really is specifying contest dates, given that this particular product doesn't have an announced release date it would seem pointless to run it now, as potentially it could end a year before the game comes out. ----- *I could go as simple as having any user just come to the site and enter their email address and simply monitor the IPs so one guy doesn't get like 10 entries, but the point of it is to promote the site, if I done it that way they'd enter and be gone within 30 seconds. Of course I know I'm not going to get loyal visitors just by running competitions but this is just to boost it a bit.
You can have them do anything you deem necessary - this is YOUR contest. As far as I know for laws and regulations, at least in the US, there are no real set laws about how the contest is actually held. You might need to report the giveaway (for taxing purposes??) though I am not fully sure about that, that is the main thing I would look into for it. US does have a law stating that for newsletters and such like that you HAVE to have an opt-out method, but that is simple. In regards to the Privacy Policy and such, you obviously set the rules for that, not like anyone reads those anyways - haha.