On Mon, 20 Jan 2014, Philip Shaw wrote:
On 19 Jan 2014, at 18:57 , Jim Bell <jamesdbell8@yahoo.com> wrote:
I wish somebody (one not associated with any DPL, 'AM', 'AP', etc) would file a lawsuit in federal court, challenging the government to prove that a 'death prediction lottery' or 'Assassination Market' is necessarily illegal. That's because currently the Feds may be secretly planning to file charges against 'AM's Sanjuro or others, and it would be better to pre-challenge them, before they can act like heroes, sweep in, and arrest the 'evil criminals'.
I think such a market would be reasonably safe if the pay-outs were covered by a condition which cancelled the payment if the recipient were determined to be criminally responsible for the death (in which case the money would otherwise be seized as proceeds of crime anyway, so the bookmakers might as well try to claim the money back rather than let the treasury have it).
If I were the Fedz (and I'm not :-), I would *immediately* size the entire pot by declaring them to be "Proceeds from drug activity", and then let each donator go and try to prove otherwise. This tactic is widely abused (despite the obviousness of it being patently unconstitutional, the SCOTUS has ruled otherwise on several cases: individual States, as well as the Fedz that came up with this idea of "Sieze first, "let the perps argue over it later - if they really want too". Turns out that very few siezures are ever contested (imagine that!?!?!?), out of fear of being further persecution. In fact, YT has a vast collection of examples in HD, where you can see the pigs in action: "I'm siezing that $200,000 as proceeds from a drug conspiracy. If you want to contest it, we'll arrest you for conspiracy to engage in the distribution of controlled substances, otherwise, you can just sign this handy little waiver form which says you are OK with this siezure, because the money isn't yours and you never saw it before, and if you sign it, we'll let you just walk away.". Literal Highway Robbery. Fed, SCOTUS, and usually, Population Approved. *Digusting*!
However, I think the operators would probably run into difficulties with either the bookmaking laws or the life-insurance laws.
Both of these are great points which I hadn't thought of. //Alif -- Those who make peaceful change impossible, make violent revolution inevitable. An American Spring is coming: one way or another.