I want to have a Wii giveaway to promote my new gaming site. People will have to register at the forums, and PM me with their articles (reviews, tips, glitches, cheats, etc.) and they will get 1 point/entry for every 100 words they write. When the contest is over, I will put all the names in a bucket and pull one out. So if you wrote 500 words, your name would go in the bucket 5 times. Is this legal to do? I remember my uncle saying something about raffles not being legal without a license or something...
To expand on my uncle... He manages a gas station next to WalMart, so for the past couple years in June/July he sets up a big fireworks tent. Last year he decided to give away the TV we were using to show the fireworks DVDs. I think the issue was that he had to let every customer enter the raffle (not just the ones that spent xx amount) but I'm not sure. So if that was the case, I might have to give each person the same number of entries. EDIT: I think he used the word 'lottery' instead of 'raffle'.
I don't know if those type of laws apply to online stuff. In fact, I seriously doubt it. That sounds like a state law to me. You're safe to hold the raffle, in other words giveaway or contest, on your website. It's your website. You're the one paying for it. You can pretty much do anything you want on it as long as you don't violate your host's Terms and Conditions. Millions of websites do it anyway. You're safe.
Well if he has any members join his raffle from that state he has to adhere to that state's laws, online or not. Why do you think that contests often have "Not valid in Alaska, Hawaii, Kentucky" appended to them? Anyway, it's a Wii and you're not charging people so the odds of them coming down on you are pretty slim.