Can one &quot;donate&quot; to enter a prize draw? If someone incites donations by including donors into a prize draw, is it still donation? Or is it contract? Gambling maybe? Passport: Back to Our Roots is doing that: &quot;Everyone who donates will be entered into a prize draw to win entry for themselves and a friend&quot;. Basically, if you want to attend a gig you can try winning &quot;entry&quot; by entering the draw — which you can do by either donating, or &quot;for free by post&quot;. The hitch is that the gigs &quot;will happen when it’s safe for gigs to happen properly&quot; — which may happen later than sooner, if at all. Does that sound like a scheme for gig organisers to avoid having to refund / being held to account? Is it legal-proof? If someone wins entry (having paid a &quot;donation&quot;) but the organisers never deem it safe for the gig to happen, will the donor be entitled to a refund?
Free draws are outside the remit of the Gambling Act 2005 per this guidance from the Gambling Commission (section 4 from page 5 onwards). an arrangement is a lottery only if the participants are required to pay to enter. Therefore, free draws always have been and remain exempt from statutory control. Schedule 2 to the Act gives details of what is to be treated as amounting to ‘payment to enter’ for the purposes of distinguishing free draws from lotteries. Given that there is an alternative route (sending a letter by post) to entering the prize draw, it can be regarded as a &quot;free draw&quot; and is not considered gambling. To answer the other questions: Does that sound like a scheme for gig organisers to avoid having to refund / being held to account? Is it legal proof? No. It seems entirely pragmatic to be upfront that the gigs will not be going ahead until it's safe enough to withdraw social distancing guidelines. I don't know what you mean by &quot;legal proof&quot; here. If someone wins entry (having paid a &quot;donation&quot;) but the organisers never deem it safe for the gig to happen, will the donor be entitled to a refund? It seems unlikely that there is a contract here. You are not buying a ticket, merely the right to enter a draw which may reward you with a ticket. I suppose you could argue that a contract has been formed if you have the right to dispose of your right to enter the draw, but it seems worthless to me and I can't imagine that any valuable consideration has exchanged hands as a result. Still, it would be a matter for a court to decide on the facts at the end of the day.
A private venue normally has discretion over who may attend their premises, as long as it is not because of membership in a protected class under anti-discrimination law. Note that the communication, as quoted, did not say that the banned person was a threat, but only that one of the performers felt uncomfortable. I do not think that the banned person has any legal recourse, unless they can plausibly assert that this is a case of unlawful discrimination, which the question does not suggest.
In the UK it is an offence to cause a computer to gain unauthorised access to any program or data held in any computer (s1 Computer Misuse Act 1990). It seems likely that other European jurisdictions have similar laws. Certainly Germany does: Penal Code 202a data espionage (German text - English translation). (I mention Germany because the linked thread does.) It might constitute theft in the jurisdiction if the finder did not take reasonable steps to find the owner - which may include informing the police of the find. Depending on the jurisdiction it might count as 'treasure' or abandoned property such that the finder is obliged to inform the authorities (the jurisdiction has the presumption of ownership of abandoned or lost property - e.g. Scotland), which then decide what to do with it. Legally speaking it seems to me that, to declare it legal, we have to get over such hurdles. [edit] There seems to be some dispute in the comments that cryptocurrency is subject to any regulation, counts as property, is something of value or is something that is owned and can be stolen, such that the person in the questioner's scenario could be held to account under the law for his behaviour. Aren't they merely numbers? No - plainly they do have value because people trade them with currency and goods and services. The UK's tax authority, HMRC, "does not consider cryptoassets to be currency or money" but sees them as having economic value because "they can be 'turned to account' - for example, exchanging them for goods, services, fiat currency (that is money declared by a government to be legal tender) or other tokens". They are "a new type of intangible asset". Individuals are liable "to pay UK tax if they are a UK resident and carry out a transaction with their tokens which is subject to UK tax". They are liable for "Income Tax and National Insurance contributions on cryptoassets which they receive from their employer as a form of non-cash payment [or from] mining, transaction confirmation or airdrops." (HMRC cryptoassets for individuals) Are they property? Something that can be owned, something that can be dishonestly appropriate (i.e. stolen)? That's the interesting dispute. Recently, the High Court of England and Wales ruled in a bitcoin ransomware-related case that "for the purpose of granting an interim injunction in the form of an interim proprietary injunction ... crypto currencies are a form of property capable of being the subject of a proprietary injunction". In that judgment there is some discussion of the authorities for considering or deciding they are property. ([2019] EWHC 3556 (Comm)) read from para 50 if not the whole judgment. In at least two other cryptocurrency-related cases the High Court treated the cryptocurrency as property. Vorotyntseva v Money-4 Limited, trading as Nebeus.com [2018] EWHC 2598 (Ch) and Liam David Robertson v Persons Unknown 2019. There was also a suggestion in the comments that the police would not understand and would not be interested. But there are several jurisdictions where people have been investigated, arrested, prosecuted and convicted of crimes relating to cryptocurrencies. A simple internet search for bitcoin theft, fraud or money laundering will result in some reports. In any case their interest or lack of it is irrelevant to what the law may say.
I think the law there is quite clear - you have 14 days to return the goods for a full refund, except for digital content, which you can't return once you started downloading it. That's what it says. The arguments that you try to give were quite obvious to the law makers. I think you can assume they were aware that "digital content does not have a physical form". Now if you purchased, but haven't downloaded or started downloading yet, then obviously you can get your money back. You came up with some theory that this is a "visual vanity item". You can't see it unless you download it. Once you download it, that's it. If you don't download it, you can return it. Let me repeat this: Your fancy analogies mean nothing. There are in the EU laws about being allowed to return goods for a refund. There's the general rule for buying in a store (no right other what the store offers voluntarily), online purchases (some days to return), and online purchases of digital goods (no return once you started downloading). That's the law. Your attempts at redefining the situation are totally pointless. The law says what it says. What you try to redefine doesn't mean one thing. The law clearly distinguishes several situations, and analogies don't count. What happens counts. You bought from a digital item from an online store that needs to be downloaded. And as soon as you start downloading, there is your right to return it gone. And your reasons for wanting to return the goods are completely irrelevant. You don't need any reasons, and having reasons doesn't help you.
It is certainly possible to transfer a copyright or other IP without an explicit charge, indeed it can be a pure gift, and normally would be when it is left by will, as is common enough. From a paid consultant it might be clearer to include a statement that the transfer is part of the consulting assignment, rather than putting a price of zero in a blank. But one could instead convey a permanent non-exclusive license, granting permission to use or modify the work in any way desired, ans saying that this is provided as part of the consulting process. Then there would be no question of what rights the consultant retained, or that the same or a very similar solution could be provided to different clients. Indeed such a license would not be so very different from a CC-BY license, or any of several open source licenses, although I would not use one of those by name. But the legal effect would be much the same, and the wording could be similar. Otherwise there could be a later claim that the right transferred precluded the consultant from using the same solution for other clients. Even if such a claim was not legally sound, and was not upheld, it could be a distraction and costly of time and energy at least.
Potentially -- this is almost exactly how Pachinko parlors in Japan operate, with non-cash prizes being given out, but with &quot;known&quot; nearby establishments (sometime located in the same physical building) that will buy them for cash. Other options include the giving of vouchers/gift cards as prizes. Whether this is legal or not is a question of if the buyer is &quot;truly&quot; acting independent of the gambling establishment. The general legal term for this is &quot;arm's length transactions&quot;. A completely unrelated organization is presumed to be acting in its own best interest, in an &quot;arm's length&quot; manner, though this can be overcome with evidence of collusion. If the casino is willing to &quot;buy back&quot; its marker at a given price (much like Las Vegas casinos are required to do), this can be done with independent intermediary negotiators in a legitimate arm's length transaction. In the Japan example above a &quot;three-shop system&quot; of nominally independent shops circle goods between them to effectively &quot;legalize&quot; (or at least not draw the ire of authorities over) cash gambling payouts.
To do so I used some images and Gifs which may be under copyright but since I don't earn money for myself and there is no company backing me I was hoping that there is some protection for private persons like me who just want to showcase the project. Sorry. If your website is public facing (i.e. not password protected and available only to family and close friends), you need to follow copyright law. There is no exception to copyright just because a project is run by an individual for non-commercial purposes. I am also insecure about the GDPR regulations since I give users the ability to create an account and try it out. Your profile says you're in the EU. Then you need to comply with the GDPR. Is there any way to protect me against greedy lawyers and companies? Could I write something like: "This website is a peace of art" and save myself with arguments like "artistic freedom" or "free speech"? Nope. A controversial website run by Peter Sunde had at one point a "free speech" disclaimer (similar to the one you propose) posted. However, Sunde did never use this defense in court: Finnish court slaps Peter Sunde with €350k fine. If he had shown up in court, I am pretty sure the court would have told him that such a disclaimer has no legal merit. The only protection that will make you completely safe is to adhere to the law.
Possibly The game company has almost certainly excluded liability under the contract you entered. There may be some consumer protection that you have that they cannot exclude - I don’t know enough about German law to meaningfully comment. Notwithstanding, if you were to initiate legal action against the, as yet, unknown wrongdoer, you could subpoena the relevant records from the game company with a court order. No matter what privacy or other protections the other person has, the game company must obey the order or be in contempt. Without such an order the game company is right that they can’t disclose details of other users. As a practical matter, it will cost several hundred € to initiate legal action and several thousand to pursue it to the end. And you might lose. A better response is to treat the lost €80 as a relatively cheap life lesson - many people lose a lot more learning to recognise scams.