I'm not a lawyer, but I think even I could win that argument. Heck, I found this definition in your own link: "Consideration may include a fee, a product purchase requirement, or the requirement that the entrant expend extensive time or effort." None of the costs you mention could ever be claimed to be a fee for participation in a lottery, IMO.
Legally the Bitcoin miner entry requirement of owning or renting a computer to calculate trial crypto blocks constitutes "consideration". You think a Monarch (or similar) running for 10 minutes and generating 700,000,000,000 * 60 * 10 = 42 trillion perfectly valid crypto blocks that get dumped just for not having an arbitrary pattern of X leading zeros isn't a
requirement that the entrant expend extensive time or effort?
If I enter a free raffle at the church ... bitcoin is not a legal entity or company...
Legally irrelevant.
There is no one compelling me to spend a penny....
Agreed. But you are aware that the Bitcoin "system" offers a "prize" for participation as a miner and there is no way you can compete to generate a valid Bitcoin block and win that prize without spending money - equipment purchase, cloud rental, whatever. As soon as you spend such money with the intent of generating the winning block in a ten-minute Bitcoin lottery, you have accepted the terms of the Bitcoin lottery of your own volition.
For me the strongest argument is that you are the only person making this claim. No court has said anything like this nor is there a president you point too. I have spoken to multiple accountants with experience in crypt-currency and never even heard of this?
Everybody hears of something the first time from somebody:
http://xkcd.com/1053/Here's who's also hearing about this for the first time besides you:
http://www.naag.org/naag/attorneys-general/whos-my-ag.phpHmm. I'm still not feeling it. The cartoon was kinda funny though. If the germane part is extensive time and effort it would be a huge stretch to apply it to mining. I have a friend who has mined thousands of BTC working about 1 hour per week. That's a lot less than I work for a lot less money. I would bet those laws were set up to go after contest scams. Something designed to get cheap labor under the guise of a contest. The thing about bitcoin is that there is no scammer. When you mine you work for yourself and none of your expenses go to bitcoin. They may go to the power company or Dell computers. But that is because you got power and a computer. No victim, no crooked contest business.