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Kickstarter Lays Down New Rules For When a Project Fails
An anonymous reader writes "In a blog post, Kickstarter announced several updates to its terms of use for projects. From the article: "Kickstarter has iterated on its policies several times since it launched in 2009, with the most recent wave of revisions surrounding the site's transition from only posting projects cleared by the staff to clearing all projects that meet a basic set of criteria. Even still, some projects lack clear goals, encounter setbacks, or fail to deliver, like the myIDkey project that has burned through $3.5 million without yet to distributing a finished product. The most recent terms revision is timely: on Thursday, science fiction author Neal Stephenson announced that a game he Kickstarted in 2012 with $526,000 in funding was officially canceled."
What kickstarter is afraid of, is something that can't be prevented: namely that people will need more money than they think to make something(or worse, that they happen to be scammers). Once the money is gone, no form of contract is going to get it back. And any scammer with their salt will run the money through a limited liability corporation, and pay themselves divdends/salary out of kickstarter funds. Then it can just go bankrupt.
There won't be anything to reclaim legally. So if you're going to back a kickstarter project, you have to do it in a risk-accepting mindset. Which for me, it means I only back projects that create things that I absolutely know wouldn't end up getting made otherwise. For you, that might just mean "no kickstarter ever"
Financial reward isn't the goal of kickstarter backers. Never has been.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I love how the default attitude is spite. Blame America for doing something wrong, instead of the obvious choice - make your own version of kickstarter. With blackjack, and hookers. Then you don't have to listen to what the Americans say at all. Better yet, you can exclude Americans from participating. You can even go so far as to redirect any American IP address to a landing page where you let them know all the problems you have with the US federal government.
Kickstarter doesn't do deals outside the USA for well-known legal reasons. Maybe you can discover what these are when you start your own - but you won't, so the question is moot. Still, I wish someone would. I just don't see it happening, though.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
People should identify Kickstarter projects out of interest, enjoyment, or just a sense of fun, and contribute no more money than they would be willing to use as kindling to start a campfire. If you contribute $25 in hopes of seeing an indie film completed - great if it does, sad if it doesn't. If you contribute $100 hoping to get a new piece of hardware, don't expect anything other than some p% chance that you will ever receive that hardware or if you do it will work as dreamed. If you don't have the money to lose, don't contribute.
One innovative and clearly risky hardware project I backed has people complaining that the base product shipped 2 months later than planned (hoped) and the premium product will be 5 months late. Um, guys: it was risky. There were commercial alternatives available at 10x the price. You knew that this was an attempt to create a mini-breakthrough, but you're griping because it was 2 months late and the associated app will need some point revisions? Get real.
sPh
But other than that, what have the Romans done for us?
Dark Reflection
Regular finance account reporting of how the money is being used should be required. If you can't handle it, don't ask for money.
Such production of reporting and auditing of reports has costs and could consume significant amount of project funds.
It should be up to the backers and an agreement with the backers made in advance, regarding what will be required, not up to some random third party to decide what reporting will be imposed on them both.
Given us a method for numbering Super Bowls.
Mid 20th century: I think we should build flying cars and make the skies our roadways!
People of that era: That's dangerous and impractical.
Just because an idea is radical and the mainstream rejects it that doesn't make it a *good* idea. Lot's of really bad ideas have been poo-pooed by the mainstream too.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.