There is no such thing. In fact, most anonymizing and/or VPN services flat out state in their TOS that they will respond accordingly to all legal requests for information.
Anyway, it's kind of a waste of breath for us as a community of geeks to bother engaging people (like the journalist writing that article) in conversation when they don't even care enough to put the hyperbole aside and use rational words to discuss the topic. Starting off any discussion with the loaded word "piracy" or "pirate" in the title or opening paragraph is silly and unprofessional. It'd be like someone writing an article about a guy investigating government corruption by calling him an "anti-government terrorist" and asking him "why do you hate 'Merica?!"
As for "copyright infringement", and "file sharing", there's little point in people getting their panties in a twist. Technology evolves and so do industries. We already have services like MOG and NETFLIX, which replace what a lot of questionable activities used to provide, for a combined total of a whopping $13 USD/mo. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. In the coming years, we should find more content available to more people in massive libraries like both of these services for *very affordable* subscriptions. When that finally happens, the idea of bothering with file sharing becomes silly unless you are really and truly destitute. For everyone else, it'd be absurd to waste precious time finding and downloading crap via these other methods when they could just pay $5 for an almost limitless library of music or $10 for an endless library of movies and television. The only possible exception will remain books, where there seems to be no equivalent and you'll be stuck paying the $30-$60 per book that we do, today.
As someone who creates and builds things, I'm just fine with the rest of the world using portable devices and "giving up on computers". People with cell phones and ipads as their primary devices are CONSUMERS. The more of them out there, the better for MAKERS of things. There are a fuckton more televisions than there are high end television studio cameras and production bays, too. Because only the creators of the content need those. The consumers just need a screen to watch it on.
Really? I build a new top of the line gaming rig (not even counting work rigs and other uses) about once a year, but I buy a phone about every five years.
Anyway, this submission is from AllThingsD. They're to tech what Kotaku is to videogames. It's kind of sad that anything from them even makes its way to Slashdot.
When people first started wanking-off to the whole BitCoin thing with hourly stories on every site, I was constantly shouted down as a troll for commenting on how the whole concept just felt scammy and dirty. That even if it was entirely legitimate, describing how it works to any rational human being would make them instantly feel like that isn't a real thing, but is some sort of a shady ass scheme (and remember those shady fucking things about a decade ago where you could install clients on your computer and "sell processing power to some company" and maybe earn a nickel a month for it?).
Well, I'm not going to be smug about it, but . . . it'a amusing to see the mess they've all created for themselves and how the table has turned as far as public perception. Other than the guys building massive bitcoin farms in some sort of a nuts "I'm going to go be a prospector" sort of way.
Rampant corruption and criminal activities of many unions aside, I don't have a problem with unions (even at federal level) existing to help workers avoid being abused and mistreated, but I do have a problem with them then becoming something that politicians at every level have to maintain employment for, even when they're no longer needed. Cutting government spending then always becomes a battle over "they took're jerbs!". Kind of like letting a family member move into your home and then kicking them out years later.
Of course, I don't even know that unions serve a real purpose, anymore. We no longer employ twelve year old kids for sixteen hours a day in dangerous machine shops for a nickel an hour and anyone who has been wronged can seek out legal representation.
However, in the tech industry, I would certainly not ever want a union to represent me and I would not want to be forced to belong to one. I would rather find a new career.
Agreed. Cell phones are cheap as fuck. It's the service that beats you down. I have never owned a smart phone, because while I'm fine paying a couple hundred bucks every two or three yeras for a phone, I'm *not* fine paying a couple hundred bucks a *month* for a plan.
However, the argument they are using is that it's basically the same as if you shout your confession into a public street. However, if he deleted it, then it is HIS GOOD LUCK. The same way shouting a confession into a public street that just happens to be empty at the moment isn't incriminating. The "evidence" is lost to the ether.
Yes, it was stupid of him to begin with, but that doesn't mean we should just steamroll over important concepts like this.
They had no option, at this point, but to comply. However, the court decision was completely fucked up.
My understanding is the argument went something like "you have to hand the information over, because he has no right to expectation of privacy when posting on the internet -- it's exactly as if he had opened up his window and shouted out to the world".
However, that is BULLSHIT. If he posted something and then deleted it before anyone could access or use it, it's just like he had shouted out a confession of murder from his window and there happened to be nobody around to hear it, at the time. His words are, then, lost to the ether. So it is a horrible comparison to say that something he has posted *then deleted before anyone could archive it* is the same.
Whether or not you and I can understand it is irrelevant. You either have free speech or you don't. If you do, then being a troll and being mean is just as valid an act of free speech as anything else and neither of us has any right to determine that it's not allowed, because "well, it has no meaningful value".
Defamation causes actual harm and is detrimental to the target of it, beyond just "feelin' bad because of a twitter from a meanie-pants jerkface".
Right, because this is so incredibly far-fetched for any other religion. Tell me you can't see some crazy pissed-off Christian attending a boycott/protest of some movie depicting teh baby jebus in some way and deciding to bring along an automatic weapon and spreading a little gospel of his own at a multiplex.
Agreed. I read the submission twice. Then checked some comments. Then went back and read the submission a third time. I was sure I was missing something, somewhere. This has nothing to do with tech or nerds. It barely even qualifies as politics, for that matter. This belongs on Good Morning America or some other drivel.
Idiots are so accustomed to ads and feel that it's their duty to view them (just listen to conversations where people are apologists for the web being nothing but page after page of fucking obnoxious advertising all over the screen) that, ultimately, they're going to be EVERYWHERE. They're even going to be in your books. Not just on the lock-screen of your e-reader. They're going to be either every few pages of the actual book you read or even embedded IN every page of the book you read, just like ads on each web page are. They're going to be fucking EVERYWHERE.
This is exactly how I feel when it comes to quantum-anything. Especially quantum-computing, which leaves me looking at papers on it the way my cat looks at me when I ask him to do my taxes. It's one of the best examples I've encountered of anything sufficiently advanced enough being indistinguishable from magic.
The best content on the internet is produced out of a passion for creating the content, rather than a desire to make a buck. The commoditization of the internet will ruin it, yet. We can't even escape marketing and obnoxious advertising *here*. The majority of people just want to make a buck, right down to the last mommy-blogger that plasters her five-views-a-month blogger page with adsense just so she can eek a nickel out of every last word.
Remember when people did shit because they cared? They didn't have to monetize every square inch of every page of their website? The created services and content because they loved doing it or cared about the community they were doing it for? Remember when sysops built communities for free? They bought the hardware, they maintained everything, they paid for the phone lines, they spent hundreds of hours adding content, connecting their services to multi-node door games, setting up FIDOnet, accounting, etc. And they did it because they enjoyed it. And if people appreciated it enough, they chipped in some cash. Not because they were asked to, but because they wanted to. And you didn't have to be confronted with ads.
I'm not saying the whole internet has to be like that, but does *EVERYONE* have to eek a penny out of every last spot they can? Not just big websites with huge advertising contracts, but right down to every jackhole with a dinky little website or blog?
When I started my site in 1997, I did it with the specific intention of never monetizing it. I didn't charge money. I didn't charge fees. I didn't sell ads. Nothing. I did it because it was enjoyable and it served a purpose for people that they found valuable. I'm sure they'd have paid if I asked, but I didn't. It felt dirty. It felt unnecessary. I thought it was a righteous and reasonable thing to do.
Almost a decade later, I met someone in a bar and it turned out she was a long-time member of my site. We got to talking about it for awhile and when I brought up advertising, she paused and said that she actually had never even noticed that there was no advertising on the site. I couldn't believe it. I feel so accosted by advertising every fucking where I turn that I sure as hell notice it on sites and appreciate the lack of it on others. And here, I discovered that regular people neither give a shit nor even notice whether there are or aren't any ads.
Instead of stalking me in every post on Slashdot and claiming that because Kickstarter has changed the language they used since I last reviewed it, that I'm "making things up", try adding something of value to the conversation.
First - THEY ARE DONATIONS. I'll grant you that they no longer seem to actually call them that, but in every regard, they definitely treat them as donations. If they're not donations, then what is it called when you click a button to give someone five bucks and there is no reward level for it? Or when a reward level is $10 and you give them $20? Or when you give them $20 and click the "don't give me any reward" option? That's a donation. You may be promised a reward for certain levels of donations, but they ARE merely donations. They are NOT transactions of money for products, like a marketplace (though I understand one could see room here for semantics).
Anyway, there is nothing about backing a project that is anything like "ordering something from Amazon". When I order something from Amazon, I know I will be taken care of. Even if it is from a merchant who is merely listing their items on Amazon. Amazon backs all purchases through their site, whether that requires a refund or sending out another item or sending out a replacement.
If a Kickstarter project does not fulfill their rewards, it's just tough shit for you. It used to be that it *was* treated as a donation and it was specifically stated that you are NOT paying for any items, services, or experiences even if they are listed as rewards. Since your first comment provoked me to go look at their literature again, a lot of that sentiment seems to no longer be included. I'm not sure why they've done that, but it seems strange, since it actually could make it *less* clear just what you're doing when you chip in a few bucks.
If you actually believe that it's "just like ordering something from amazon", why don't you show me examples where someone has failed to fulfill their rewards and Kickstarter has set things straight for all of the backers? I'm not merely being rhetorical, either. As someone who has followed Kickstarter for more than two years and backed almost a couple hundred projects, I can tell you that I have *never* seen or heard of it happening and I would actually be interested if anyone can show where it has.
MANY kickstarters have not fulfilled their rewards by the date promised. That's reasonable. Things come up. Delays occur. Projects encounter hurdles and are more difficult than expected. But, eventually, it has to be called a failure. Or a scam. or a fraud. Or . . . whatever. And some of these *HAVE* happened. Where is Kickstarter on those? What are they doing to enforce the meaningless TOS clause that "rewards must be fulfilled"? When my delivery doesn't come from Amazon or it's broken or something, I just email them and they apologize profusely and give me free overnight shipping of the thing to rectify it. What does Kickstarter do?
Here's one example of such a Kickstarter. They don't seem to have been a scam, but they could have been. And to my knowledge, Kickstarter never stepped in or attempted to do anything about it.
They received successful funding (more than 300%). The Kickstarter closed almost *fifteen months ago*. People didn't start receiving their rewards until about a month ago, despite many comments over the year and change asking what was going on and if people were ever actually going to get their rewards. As of today, about 20% of the backers have gotten their pledge fulfilled.
They may have decided to strip the "these are donations" language from their documentation on the site, but that doesn't change what they are. You are making donations and being promised rewards and there is nothing to guarantee those rewards will be fulfilled and many kickstarters are absolutely *not* about facilitating a product transaction even in the loosest sense.
Ooh. Next time you comment on one of my posts, can you add something in there about my mom or my breeding or something, too?
Their site used to employ the terminology of "donations" and "donators" along with "pledges", but with the exception of not allowing *charities*. I recall when I first read it and found the language a bit surprising. You could just do a search for "donation" in their help section and it'd pull up instances of it, which I am no longer able to successfully do. The references to fulfilling rewards, however, is meaningless, because they also mention elsewhere that there is basically nothing they can do about a failure to fulfill and I'm not aware of any instance where they have taken actions to assist in such a thing. In fact, I have seen at least one project that went back for more funding while their first project still remained unfulfilled. They got around the rule of "not double dipping" by stating that the first project was for the item on mobile devices and the second project was for the PC.
It strikes me that the rush of video game kickstarters and a few other successful projects by established companies may have changed how they perceive their own service. That established businesses would essentially use Kickstarter as a method of side-financing and pre-ordering products was probably a surprise to them and facilitating so many of those types of projects definitely comes with issues that you may not have to address when you're just catering to five dudes wanting to put out an album and looking for funding studio time.
Kickstarter isn't a marketplace. You don't exchange cash for goods. You may be promised some goods for certain amounts of donations, but the donations are separate unto themselves. Therefore, if Finland doesn't allow donations without being licensed, then this falls into that, because you are not explicitly paying money for a product in return.
No. You are making a donation. Period. (Note that it is not a *charitable* donation, however). Kickstarter's literature specifically uses the word "donation".
The only requirement for the project to receive your money is that, collectively, the amount of money pledged reaches their pre-defined goal.
Kickstarter states that any promised rewards *should* be fulfilled, but those are essentially an aside to the pledge itself and if the reward is never fulfilled, you essentially have no recourse whatsoever. Well, that's not entirely true -- you can try to get it from the person who is running the project, but since Kickstarter never actually touches the money, they have no mechanism through which to refund you. Assuming they even would bother with a process to facilitate that -- which they probably wouldn't, since they aren't even willing to establish a process to vet submitted projects.
In the few years that Kickstarter has been going, there have been no catastrophic horror stories. There have been a few scams detected while in-the-act and cancelled and there have been some that are taking their own sweet delayed time to fulfill them, but I think we're a good year and a half away from any potential major backlash due to lack of fulfillment. That's because projects really started to surge once Double Fine threw their hat in the ring and most projects after that won't be culminating for some time, still.
Of course, you should get something if you're told that you're going to, but you should also not back a project with your rent-money. I think of every dollar I throw into Kickstarters as a spin at the roulette wheel. If it fails (to follow through), I paid the price of admission to go along for the ride and get the updates and see how the project goes. If it succeeds, I get something cool that I wanted, too. Not to mention, not every kickstarter is about "if you pledge $20, I'll give you a thing". Sometimes it's just "I want to produce a play in my town, please back me to get it going". Video games and board games get the most attention, but there have been some cool things like a project to massively automate the preservation and archival of a massive collection of black history photographs.
Unfortunately, a lot of people immediately scream "REGULATION DURP DURP!". I don't see the point in that. You're free to chip in your money or not and the up and downside is clearly laid out. I think people who scream about that tend to misunderstand (and have never even visited the website). They somehow think you're literally investing in the project in a real way. As in, a way that would require filings and SEC administration.
What is going to happen is that Kickstarter will remain the king for awhile and if they ever seriously falter, they will have to quickly get their shit together (vetting projects and getting more involved in their facilitation to assure backers -- perhaps even to the point of establishing SafeHarbor gaurantees like eBay and Amazon do for purchases from merchants that use their marketplaces)... or someone else will do those things and eat their lunch. Competition will ensure that if this remains a viable idea that the public is interested in, someone finds a way to improve upon it and make it more stable.
In the meantime, I've paid out about $1,600 of about $5,000 in pledges. Had some great experiences (met some fantastic people I would never have imagined I would), got some cool games and albums, kept up with projects via lots of updates. Participated in community decision-making projects on some things I've liked, and jumped in as a beta tester (actual beta-testing; not the modern video game industry definition of beta-testing as marketing) and have seen some really passionate people rewarded with community interest in their projects. If I get screwed on a couple of projects, I'll get over it.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no such thing. In fact, most anonymizing and/or VPN services flat out state in their TOS that they will respond accordingly to all legal requests for information.
Anyway, it's kind of a waste of breath for us as a community of geeks to bother engaging people (like the journalist writing that article) in conversation when they don't even care enough to put the hyperbole aside and use rational words to discuss the topic. Starting off any discussion with the loaded word "piracy" or "pirate" in the title or opening paragraph is silly and unprofessional. It'd be like someone writing an article about a guy investigating government corruption by calling him an "anti-government terrorist" and asking him "why do you hate 'Merica?!"
As for "copyright infringement", and "file sharing", there's little point in people getting their panties in a twist. Technology evolves and so do industries. We already have services like MOG and NETFLIX, which replace what a lot of questionable activities used to provide, for a combined total of a whopping $13 USD/mo. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. In the coming years, we should find more content available to more people in massive libraries like both of these services for *very affordable* subscriptions. When that finally happens, the idea of bothering with file sharing becomes silly unless you are really and truly destitute. For everyone else, it'd be absurd to waste precious time finding and downloading crap via these other methods when they could just pay $5 for an almost limitless library of music or $10 for an endless library of movies and television. The only possible exception will remain books, where there seems to be no equivalent and you'll be stuck paying the $30-$60 per book that we do, today.
Those guys have been around for DECADES. They're called smokers. They leave for ten minute breaks about ten times a day.
If unions started popping up in my field, I would leave the tech industry and find another line of work.
As someone who creates and builds things, I'm just fine with the rest of the world using portable devices and "giving up on computers". People with cell phones and ipads as their primary devices are CONSUMERS. The more of them out there, the better for MAKERS of things. There are a fuckton more televisions than there are high end television studio cameras and production bays, too. Because only the creators of the content need those. The consumers just need a screen to watch it on.
Really? I build a new top of the line gaming rig (not even counting work rigs and other uses) about once a year, but I buy a phone about every five years.
Anyway, this submission is from AllThingsD. They're to tech what Kotaku is to videogames. It's kind of sad that anything from them even makes its way to Slashdot.
When people first started wanking-off to the whole BitCoin thing with hourly stories on every site, I was constantly shouted down as a troll for commenting on how the whole concept just felt scammy and dirty. That even if it was entirely legitimate, describing how it works to any rational human being would make them instantly feel like that isn't a real thing, but is some sort of a shady ass scheme (and remember those shady fucking things about a decade ago where you could install clients on your computer and "sell processing power to some company" and maybe earn a nickel a month for it?).
Well, I'm not going to be smug about it, but . . . it'a amusing to see the mess they've all created for themselves and how the table has turned as far as public perception. Other than the guys building massive bitcoin farms in some sort of a nuts "I'm going to go be a prospector" sort of way.
Yeah, but we need that $1,300,000,000.00 to fund almost two days of of military operations over seas.
Rampant corruption and criminal activities of many unions aside, I don't have a problem with unions (even at federal level) existing to help workers avoid being abused and mistreated, but I do have a problem with them then becoming something that politicians at every level have to maintain employment for, even when they're no longer needed. Cutting government spending then always becomes a battle over "they took're jerbs!". Kind of like letting a family member move into your home and then kicking them out years later.
Of course, I don't even know that unions serve a real purpose, anymore. We no longer employ twelve year old kids for sixteen hours a day in dangerous machine shops for a nickel an hour and anyone who has been wronged can seek out legal representation.
However, in the tech industry, I would certainly not ever want a union to represent me and I would not want to be forced to belong to one. I would rather find a new career.
Agreed. Cell phones are cheap as fuck. It's the service that beats you down. I have never owned a smart phone, because while I'm fine paying a couple hundred bucks every two or three yeras for a phone, I'm *not* fine paying a couple hundred bucks a *month* for a plan.
However, the argument they are using is that it's basically the same as if you shout your confession into a public street. However, if he deleted it, then it is HIS GOOD LUCK. The same way shouting a confession into a public street that just happens to be empty at the moment isn't incriminating. The "evidence" is lost to the ether.
Yes, it was stupid of him to begin with, but that doesn't mean we should just steamroll over important concepts like this.
They had no option, at this point, but to comply. However, the court decision was completely fucked up.
My understanding is the argument went something like "you have to hand the information over, because he has no right to expectation of privacy when posting on the internet -- it's exactly as if he had opened up his window and shouted out to the world".
However, that is BULLSHIT. If he posted something and then deleted it before anyone could access or use it, it's just like he had shouted out a confession of murder from his window and there happened to be nobody around to hear it, at the time. His words are, then, lost to the ether. So it is a horrible comparison to say that something he has posted *then deleted before anyone could archive it* is the same.
Whether or not you and I can understand it is irrelevant. You either have free speech or you don't. If you do, then being a troll and being mean is just as valid an act of free speech as anything else and neither of us has any right to determine that it's not allowed, because "well, it has no meaningful value".
Defamation causes actual harm and is detrimental to the target of it, beyond just "feelin' bad because of a twitter from a meanie-pants jerkface".
Well, apparently "abuse" is "anything that makes someone feel bad".
Right, because this is so incredibly far-fetched for any other religion. Tell me you can't see some crazy pissed-off Christian attending a boycott/protest of some movie depicting teh baby jebus in some way and deciding to bring along an automatic weapon and spreading a little gospel of his own at a multiplex.
A better analogy would be "I'm sure a construction worker believes that a Fisher Price Tool Set is a tool for doing actual work".
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Fisher-Price-Drillin-Action-Tool-Set/12961443
Agreed. I read the submission twice. Then checked some comments. Then went back and read the submission a third time. I was sure I was missing something, somewhere. This has nothing to do with tech or nerds. It barely even qualifies as politics, for that matter. This belongs on Good Morning America or some other drivel.
Idiots are so accustomed to ads and feel that it's their duty to view them (just listen to conversations where people are apologists for the web being nothing but page after page of fucking obnoxious advertising all over the screen) that, ultimately, they're going to be EVERYWHERE. They're even going to be in your books. Not just on the lock-screen of your e-reader. They're going to be either every few pages of the actual book you read or even embedded IN every page of the book you read, just like ads on each web page are. They're going to be fucking EVERYWHERE.
This is exactly how I feel when it comes to quantum-anything. Especially quantum-computing, which leaves me looking at papers on it the way my cat looks at me when I ask him to do my taxes. It's one of the best examples I've encountered of anything sufficiently advanced enough being indistinguishable from magic.
I will honor not breaking into your house, but only if you leave your house unlocked by default.
Frankly, they can do whatever the fuck they want. I've been blocking ads since the last century and this bullshit won't change anything.
The best content on the internet is produced out of a passion for creating the content, rather than a desire to make a buck. The commoditization of the internet will ruin it, yet. We can't even escape marketing and obnoxious advertising *here*. The majority of people just want to make a buck, right down to the last mommy-blogger that plasters her five-views-a-month blogger page with adsense just so she can eek a nickel out of every last word.
Remember when people did shit because they cared? They didn't have to monetize every square inch of every page of their website? The created services and content because they loved doing it or cared about the community they were doing it for? Remember when sysops built communities for free? They bought the hardware, they maintained everything, they paid for the phone lines, they spent hundreds of hours adding content, connecting their services to multi-node door games, setting up FIDOnet, accounting, etc. And they did it because they enjoyed it. And if people appreciated it enough, they chipped in some cash. Not because they were asked to, but because they wanted to. And you didn't have to be confronted with ads.
I'm not saying the whole internet has to be like that, but does *EVERYONE* have to eek a penny out of every last spot they can? Not just big websites with huge advertising contracts, but right down to every jackhole with a dinky little website or blog?
When I started my site in 1997, I did it with the specific intention of never monetizing it. I didn't charge money. I didn't charge fees. I didn't sell ads. Nothing. I did it because it was enjoyable and it served a purpose for people that they found valuable. I'm sure they'd have paid if I asked, but I didn't. It felt dirty. It felt unnecessary. I thought it was a righteous and reasonable thing to do.
Almost a decade later, I met someone in a bar and it turned out she was a long-time member of my site. We got to talking about it for awhile and when I brought up advertising, she paused and said that she actually had never even noticed that there was no advertising on the site. I couldn't believe it. I feel so accosted by advertising every fucking where I turn that I sure as hell notice it on sites and appreciate the lack of it on others. And here, I discovered that regular people neither give a shit nor even notice whether there are or aren't any ads.
Instead of stalking me in every post on Slashdot and claiming that because Kickstarter has changed the language they used since I last reviewed it, that I'm "making things up", try adding something of value to the conversation.
First - THEY ARE DONATIONS. I'll grant you that they no longer seem to actually call them that, but in every regard, they definitely treat them as donations. If they're not donations, then what is it called when you click a button to give someone five bucks and there is no reward level for it? Or when a reward level is $10 and you give them $20? Or when you give them $20 and click the "don't give me any reward" option? That's a donation. You may be promised a reward for certain levels of donations, but they ARE merely donations. They are NOT transactions of money for products, like a marketplace (though I understand one could see room here for semantics).
Anyway, there is nothing about backing a project that is anything like "ordering something from Amazon". When I order something from Amazon, I know I will be taken care of. Even if it is from a merchant who is merely listing their items on Amazon. Amazon backs all purchases through their site, whether that requires a refund or sending out another item or sending out a replacement.
If a Kickstarter project does not fulfill their rewards, it's just tough shit for you. It used to be that it *was* treated as a donation and it was specifically stated that you are NOT paying for any items, services, or experiences even if they are listed as rewards. Since your first comment provoked me to go look at their literature again, a lot of that sentiment seems to no longer be included. I'm not sure why they've done that, but it seems strange, since it actually could make it *less* clear just what you're doing when you chip in a few bucks.
If you actually believe that it's "just like ordering something from amazon", why don't you show me examples where someone has failed to fulfill their rewards and Kickstarter has set things straight for all of the backers? I'm not merely being rhetorical, either. As someone who has followed Kickstarter for more than two years and backed almost a couple hundred projects, I can tell you that I have *never* seen or heard of it happening and I would actually be interested if anyone can show where it has.
MANY kickstarters have not fulfilled their rewards by the date promised. That's reasonable. Things come up. Delays occur. Projects encounter hurdles and are more difficult than expected. But, eventually, it has to be called a failure. Or a scam. or a fraud. Or . . . whatever. And some of these *HAVE* happened. Where is Kickstarter on those? What are they doing to enforce the meaningless TOS clause that "rewards must be fulfilled"? When my delivery doesn't come from Amazon or it's broken or something, I just email them and they apologize profusely and give me free overnight shipping of the thing to rectify it. What does Kickstarter do?
Here's one example of such a Kickstarter. They don't seem to have been a scam, but they could have been. And to my knowledge, Kickstarter never stepped in or attempted to do anything about it.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1536325846/dice-age-the-new-era-of-dice?ref=live
They received successful funding (more than 300%). The Kickstarter closed almost *fifteen months ago*. People didn't start receiving their rewards until about a month ago, despite many comments over the year and change asking what was going on and if people were ever actually going to get their rewards. As of today, about 20% of the backers have gotten their pledge fulfilled.
They may have decided to strip the "these are donations" language from their documentation on the site, but that doesn't change what they are. You are making donations and being promised rewards and there is nothing to guarantee those rewards will be fulfilled and many kickstarters are absolutely *not* about facilitating a product transaction even in the loosest sense.
Ooh. Next time you comment on one of my posts, can you add something in there about my mom or my breeding or something, too?
Then it has changed.
Their site used to employ the terminology of "donations" and "donators" along with "pledges", but with the exception of not allowing *charities*. I recall when I first read it and found the language a bit surprising. You could just do a search for "donation" in their help section and it'd pull up instances of it, which I am no longer able to successfully do. The references to fulfilling rewards, however, is meaningless, because they also mention elsewhere that there is basically nothing they can do about a failure to fulfill and I'm not aware of any instance where they have taken actions to assist in such a thing. In fact, I have seen at least one project that went back for more funding while their first project still remained unfulfilled. They got around the rule of "not double dipping" by stating that the first project was for the item on mobile devices and the second project was for the PC.
It strikes me that the rush of video game kickstarters and a few other successful projects by established companies may have changed how they perceive their own service. That established businesses would essentially use Kickstarter as a method of side-financing and pre-ordering products was probably a surprise to them and facilitating so many of those types of projects definitely comes with issues that you may not have to address when you're just catering to five dudes wanting to put out an album and looking for funding studio time.
Kickstarter isn't a marketplace. You don't exchange cash for goods. You may be promised some goods for certain amounts of donations, but the donations are separate unto themselves. Therefore, if Finland doesn't allow donations without being licensed, then this falls into that, because you are not explicitly paying money for a product in return.
No. You are making a donation. Period. (Note that it is not a *charitable* donation, however). Kickstarter's literature specifically uses the word "donation".
The only requirement for the project to receive your money is that, collectively, the amount of money pledged reaches their pre-defined goal.
Kickstarter states that any promised rewards *should* be fulfilled, but those are essentially an aside to the pledge itself and if the reward is never fulfilled, you essentially have no recourse whatsoever. Well, that's not entirely true -- you can try to get it from the person who is running the project, but since Kickstarter never actually touches the money, they have no mechanism through which to refund you. Assuming they even would bother with a process to facilitate that -- which they probably wouldn't, since they aren't even willing to establish a process to vet submitted projects.
In the few years that Kickstarter has been going, there have been no catastrophic horror stories. There have been a few scams detected while in-the-act and cancelled and there have been some that are taking their own sweet delayed time to fulfill them, but I think we're a good year and a half away from any potential major backlash due to lack of fulfillment. That's because projects really started to surge once Double Fine threw their hat in the ring and most projects after that won't be culminating for some time, still.
Of course, you should get something if you're told that you're going to, but you should also not back a project with your rent-money. I think of every dollar I throw into Kickstarters as a spin at the roulette wheel. If it fails (to follow through), I paid the price of admission to go along for the ride and get the updates and see how the project goes. If it succeeds, I get something cool that I wanted, too. Not to mention, not every kickstarter is about "if you pledge $20, I'll give you a thing". Sometimes it's just "I want to produce a play in my town, please back me to get it going". Video games and board games get the most attention, but there have been some cool things like a project to massively automate the preservation and archival of a massive collection of black history photographs.
Unfortunately, a lot of people immediately scream "REGULATION DURP DURP!". I don't see the point in that. You're free to chip in your money or not and the up and downside is clearly laid out. I think people who scream about that tend to misunderstand (and have never even visited the website). They somehow think you're literally investing in the project in a real way. As in, a way that would require filings and SEC administration.
What is going to happen is that Kickstarter will remain the king for awhile and if they ever seriously falter, they will have to quickly get their shit together (vetting projects and getting more involved in their facilitation to assure backers -- perhaps even to the point of establishing SafeHarbor gaurantees like eBay and Amazon do for purchases from merchants that use their marketplaces)... or someone else will do those things and eat their lunch. Competition will ensure that if this remains a viable idea that the public is interested in, someone finds a way to improve upon it and make it more stable.
In the meantime, I've paid out about $1,600 of about $5,000 in pledges. Had some great experiences (met some fantastic people I would never have imagined I would), got some cool games and albums, kept up with projects via lots of updates. Participated in community decision-making projects on some things I've liked, and jumped in as a beta tester (actual beta-testing; not the modern video game industry definition of beta-testing as marketing) and have seen some really passionate people rewarded with community interest in their projects. If I get screwed on a couple of projects, I'll get over it.
WRONG. The Airwolf theme song would be PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE. :D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIoSPevvsds