Trek's Ride-with-Lance giveaway anti-Canadian?

[Erik Freitag]

I was browsing the rules for the contest, because I have no chance of
winning and would complete embarass myself if I did win, when I came
across this remarkable text:

"A potential recipient of the Grand Prize who is Canadian must
satisfactorily complete a suitable skills test before the prize is
awarded, or alternate winner [sic] will be selected".

My question: what have Canadians done (or what can't they do) to
have Trek single them out this way?

And if you are Québécois, you can't even play.

 

[Luigi de Guzman]

On Thu, 01 Jul 2004 13:05:11 -0700, Erik Freitag
<[email protected]> wrote:

>I was browsing the rules for the contest, because I have no chance of
>winning and would complete embarass myself if I did win, when I came
>across this remarkable text:
>
>"A potential recipient of the Grand Prize who is Canadian must
>satisfactorily complete a suitable skills test before the prize is
>awarded, or alternate winner [sic] will be selected".

That satisfies the provision in the law against unlawful games of
chance or draws. A raffle is a game of chance--but if you subject the
winner to a trivial test, or question -and-answer, then it's a test of
skill, and therefore legal.

I believe similar provisions are on the books in other jurisdictions.

=-Luigi

>
>My question: what have Canadians done (or what can't they do) to
>have Trek single them out this way?
>
>And if you are Québécois, you can't even play.

 

[Erik Freitag]

On Thu, 01 Jul 2004 17:15:07 -0400, Luigi de Guzman wrote:

> On Thu, 01 Jul 2004 13:05:11 -0700, Erik Freitag <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> That satisfies the provision in the law against unlawful games of chance
> or draws. A raffle is a game of chance--but if you subject the winner to
> a trivial test, or question -and-answer, then it's a test of skill, and
> therefore legal.
>
> I believe similar provisions are on the books in other jurisdictions.

Aha. Thanks, I thought maybe Canadians were known wrong-way riders or
wouldn't be fast enough because of the metric system or something.

 

[DRS]

"Luigi de Guzman" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]
> On Thu, 01 Jul 2004 13:05:11 -0700, Erik Freitag
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> I was browsing the rules for the contest, because I have no chance of
>> winning and would complete embarass myself if I did win, when I came
>> across this remarkable text:
>>
>> "A potential recipient of the Grand Prize who is Canadian must
>> satisfactorily complete a suitable skills test before the prize is
>> awarded, or alternate winner [sic] will be selected".
>
> That satisfies the provision in the law against unlawful games of
> chance or draws. A raffle is a game of chance--but if you subject the
> winner to a trivial test, or question -and-answer, then it's a test of
> skill, and therefore legal.
>
> I believe similar provisions are on the books in other jurisdictions.

Quite right. And the "test" will be along the lines of:

"OK, to win the *Trek* Ride With Lance give-away, just answer this simple
question: what brand of bike does Lance ride?"

and, as you say, it's all perfectly legal.

--

A: Top-posters.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet?

 

[Zippy the Pinhead]

On Thu, 01 Jul 2004 16:15:07 -0400, Luigi de Guzman
<[email protected]> wrote:

>That satisfies the provision in the law against unlawful games of
>chance or draws.

Damn. I was sitting here trying to make up some stupid explanation,
and here you come up with this perfectly governmental one, saving me
the trouble.