Is It Legal To Write A Book That Sends People On A Scavenger Hunt For Prizes?
Posted on October 1st, 2009 by insurance
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I want to write a book that gives away a prize for people that complete tasks outlined in the book. Is it legal?
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Filed under: Legal
The first answer is right. It’s legal as long as people don’t have to do anything illegal to solve the puzzle, and as long as the book doesn’t appear to encourage them to do anything illegal.
go for it.
Your main problem (apart from convincing someone to publish it) is that crackpots will come up with their own solutions that are self-consistent (if they’re lucky) but hopelessly wrong, and you will never be able to convince them that they’re wrong, even after the puzzle has been solved and the prize claimed. They’ll say that the prize that’s been claimed isn’t the real one, or that it wasn’t you who presented the prize, but an impostor, or that you “recovered” the prize from the winner and hid it somewhere else, or…
You’d be dealing with the kind of people who think the moon landings were faked, that Elvis is still alive, but Paul McCartney has been dead for years, and that the British Empire is secretly running the USA. If you can cope with that (or you’re one of those people
One other thing – individuals have access to a lot of computing power these days. Try to devise a puzzle that can’t be solved by brute force (programming the computer to try every possible solution until it finds the right one). Or if it is that sort of puzzle, make sure there are enough possible answers that a computer couldn’t check all of them before a human works it out by applying some intelligence.
I don’t think it would be illegal unless you’re telling them to commit crimes or telling them to do things that are dangerous to themselves or other people. Other than that is does sound interesting. Maybe you should talk to a lawyer who is versed in publishing laws or an agent.
is it legal? This is America, dear child, not the USSR.
and it ain’t 1984 either
I’ve heard of books that did that and got in trouble, but that was only because they had to sneak into places that weren’t open to the public. Just keep it out in the open.