Updates on the Death Prediction Lottery.

[Jim Bell]

From: Philip Shaw <wahspilihp at gmail.com>

On 19 Jan 2014, at 18:57 , Jim Bell <jamesdbell8 at 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). 

At the risk of inadvertently patting myself on the back (I probably mentioned something like this in my AP essay), that's a good tactic.  Keep in mind that most donors to DPL/'AM/AP would have no problem paying any perpetrators.  Further, such systems will presumably be carefully designed to prevent the identification of those bettors/donors, so even if there is a prosecution after a death, it will become very difficult or impossible to determine if the party charged is the same person who is to receive the payment.  Further, the wheels of justice grind slowly.  Any such payment should probably be made very quickly, certainly within a month and quite possibly within a week.  The organization making the payments will have made the payment long before anybody is convicted for a crime.  So, while I think it's a good idea to include such a clause, it would (happily) be of minimal effectiveness.


>However, I think the operators would probably run into difficulties with either the bookmaking laws or the life-insurance laws.

Yes, that is an additional factor.  Internet-betting has, in the past and perhaps currently, is objected to by the United States Federal government.  Defending a DPL/'AM'/AP system ought to be as easy as analogizing with life-insurance laws.


>It is also very difficult to get a court to rule that something is legal before you get prosecuted or sued for doing it, which, given the complexity of our legal systems, seems like a fairly
> significant flaw. Test cases provide some protection in civil matters, but there isn’t really a practical analogue in criminal matters.

Sorry to contradict you, but I recall cases (up to the level of the US Supreme Court) allowing this.  How 'difficult' it is, I don't recall.  Problem is, I don't have access to the Lexis system that I used while stuck in the Fed's "gated communities".  But at least at the Federal level, such a mechanism exists.  I wish I could be more specific.   I'll check  www.law.cornell.edu.
               Jim Bell
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