Win a Battle Axe and $3,000 in Wufoo's API Contest

It is cool. I once ran OpenGLForums.com and when the movie Blade was really popular, I ran a contest to make a 3D movie programmatically about Blade and the winner would win the sword (or a replica, rather) from the movie. Unfortunately, it turns out shipping a weapon is much more difficult than it appears, especially overseas. I ended up just sending the guy the value of the sword and kept it for myself.

Regardless, this is a cool contest and has a cool prize.

For what it's worth, after a history of scams there are now a lot of regulations in the US around contests and lotteries. I've see "US residents only" in fine print before, and I wouldn't be surprised if they would risk legal or tax problems if they let anyone else participate.

There's probably all sorts of complications when sending a battle axe around the world. I don't think it would get past Australian customs without some additional documentation for example.

I guess they aren't allowed to export weapons.

There are very different regulations in each separate country, and sometimes even in regions within countries. For instance, you can run a contest of skill (which this is) in Canada, but you have to exclude Quebec. Also, the laws are always changing. For instance, we used to have to exclude Puerto Rico, but it's now okay to include them.

To do a worldwide contest, you'd need to have a lawyer who knows the local rules in every country in which you want to operate. Allowing U.S. residents only is just much cheaper and less expensive.

If you ever think about running a contest for substantial prizes, be sure to consult a lawyer who knows something about it. The FTC and its overseas equivalents are not shy about making sure the rules are enforced.

Too bad.. :/ I had a decent idea. Where I live (Quebec) this happens constantly - contests are often open to everyone except Quebec.

The fact that there is a market for point solutions like this always amazes me -- but we needed one ourselves in the early days, when we wanted to run a customer survey but were too busy building the product to write one.

The terms of the contest say you get to keep it:

"The code from all submitted entries remains entirely under the ownership of the submitter. The exception is wrapper libraries which we require to be open source and permission given to us to put up on our GitHub repository."