All right, all you "Legal Begals" out there... I have a question regarding publically run contests.
Over the past month, I was a part of a contest site. The basic premise is, write up a post about what you would do with the money, if you were to win. Then, the most popular post at the end of the month wins.
The popularity is decided mostly by how many page views you get, but also based on bonus points you receive for playing games.
The prize is based on how much money the site makes from advertisers. The prize is then split in half between the site, and the winner. Last month, the winner received $750, which meant that the site brought in $1500 in advertising fees.
So this is my question-
With only a few days left in the year, the site decided late last night to just shut down, and keep the money, rather than award a prize, or hold off a few days so that they could award a prize.
As it was a publically run website & contest, how legal is that?
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But, it doesn't list the owners info, just the website that bought the domain name. Grr.. I was hoping for an actual working email address, or a physical address.
Instead, I get this:
registrant-firstname: Oneandone
registrant-lastname: Private Registration
registrant-organization: 1&1 Internet, Inc. - http://1and1.com/contact
registrant-street1: 701 Lee Road, Suite 300
registrant-street2: ATTN: cash-splitters.com
registrant-pcode: 19087
registrant-state: PA
registrant-city: Chesterbrook
registrant-ccode: US
registrant-phone: +1.8772064254
registrant-email: proxy1001568@1and1-private-registration.com
They removed the entire site, though, so I can't read past TOS. Also, the most recent version in the wayback internet machine is from May.
What happens when you call that phone number?
I haven't tried the number yet, but I did email the company through the address found in the registration information.
http://www.startaid.com/comment/1573709/Cash-Splitters-com-%C2%BB-How-it-Works-(1).html
How do you know anyone even actually won last time???
The only thing I see that's different, however, is that the minimum cash payout is $100 now, instead of $25
But then, on my drive into work today, I began to think - earlier this year there were winners who did so with 50,000 page views in say January and Feb. And this month, we were at well over 2,000,000 page views. As was 2nd place. In total, it was over 50 times the page views than many of the months were. It kind of occurred to me that if they made roughly $1,500 on it last month, how much might they have made this month?
It kinda hit me that they might have raked in a ton from their advertisers, who base the earnings on the # of times their ads get loaded and clicked upon, and that they decided to head for the hills not only due to the 'stress' of running the competition, but due to the huge #'s they may be seeing this month off of the contest.