You Sir have to learn how to read correctly. You argument is invalid since both of these guys did not say those specific words in a terms of service context. IF you have those terms in your ToS, you need to have the appropriate licenses. That is not only so in the US, it's pretty much everywhere in the world.
And please note that he is not liable because he sold goods for bitcoins but because he "promised" returns of investments to his customers - which only a licensed/registered/regulateted (insert any kind of money playing thingy here) can.
No, your argument is invalid because neither you nor 'orama have pointed to any law that would make it illegal, and you never will, since there is none.
Also, these are the actual terms for the
Avalon chip deal:
The no bullshit, no fine print terms of sale
1 the only payment accepted is Bitcoin.
2 these chips will be available until at least end of the year, 2013.
3 spec and various information is available on the wiki
4 the chips being sold are packaged and tested.
5 the lead time on the chips is 9 to 10 weeks,
6 made to order from TSMC foundry, this also means no refunds.
7 the order quantity is 10,000 chips.
8 the chips are identical to those in the Avalon units.
9 communication protocol, reference board design can be found on github.
10 everything will be open source from FPGA to PCB design.
11 30 sample chips will be provided 4 weeks into ordering per 10,000 chips.
12 we do not offer technical support of any kind, this is final.
13 if you do not know what to do with the reference design / packaged chips, please do not purchase.
I don't know where on the site they mentioned their price calculation but it's not in the ToS.
Here's the
terms of sale for batch 3:
We Accept Bitcoin Only – Bitcoin allow us to collect large sum of assets in a short period of time, and due their nature the bitcoins can also be move to where they are suppose to go in a similar time frame. It also make sense as the Avalon units mine bitcoins so they should be priced as such accordingly.
No Refunds - The Avalon units are made on a built-to-order basis. This means when you place an order, your bitcoins are used to order parts to construct your Avalon Unit. Refunds therefore are impossible. Utilizing a short time frame, batch based, and built-to-order method allows to manage finances properly and reduce risk for all parties. e.g. Avalon ASIC, the re-sellers and the buyers.
No Address Change - Unless it is a special case no address change will be allowed, please allocate time correctly to handle the delivery of these units, There has been too many people attempting to sell these units and changing their shipping address. You can choose what to do with them after you receive them, but whilst they are still in our hands they will go to the address the order was originally intended for.
Limited Customer Support - The Avalon team is comprised of a small group of capable people; however, we are also extremely limited in manpower. Every one of us handles multitude of tasks, and for this reason we will have very limited customer support. No news is good news. We apologize for this, but we do not expect this situation to change.
Not Newbie Friendly - The Avalon units are designed much like a hardware development board, while it works out of the box with very little configuration it is ultimately geared towards developers and experienced miners, please do your research before purchasing. A good place to start is the Bitcoin Wiki page on Avalon.
Please read this carefully, as with all things Bitcoin one should treat this as an investment and make the decision best for you based on the liquid-able funds available at the moment when placing an order.
There's no promise of ROI in either of those terms. The word investment does not appear. It's not against the law to simply say the product you're selling is a "good investment" or speculate about what kind of ROI a customer might get with it. Not when selling miners, or cars, or comic books or whatever.
If you think it is, point out the actual line in the law that says it is. If you can't do that, you don't have an argument that something is illegal.