I'm sure people will be happy to spend an extra $650 so they can recover their original $700
Given the way insurance works psychologically (people are risk-averse more than they are profit-oriented), you'd be surprised how many takers you'd find at a slightly lower price.
Given the poor rate of success of Kickstarter projects, you'd be surprised how much of a loss you'd make at a slightly lower price...
Which would be freakier -- seeing Jesus's face appearing from beneath your melting butter, or a simulacrum of the red face from Mars when you spread out your jam?
Except that a Kickstarter project is a contract between a business and private individuals. Consumer law trumps contract law every time, because even if the contract doesn't state "your statutory rights are not affected", you're statutory rights are not affected -- there are very few situations where a private individual can sign away statutory rights, and in such conditions, you really have to be very explicit about what rights are being signed away.
Kickstarter's boldest of bold text is the statement that the project once funded is obliged to deliver. That, I would argue (IANAL), makes it a contract of sale and subject to commercial law. Right after that sentence it goes on to enumerate remedies if a project can't complete, but by that point, the die is already cast. This hasn't been tested in the courts yet, perhaps because of low levels of loss, but this project has just lost $400K, and the company is still solvent, so there is the real possibility that this could be the first test-case.
They took a straightforward device and decided to make it more complicated. It was not the same product. Triggertrap 1 was a hacked together Arduino device -- the Ada was proper engineering, and there's a major difference there...
Citizens have the illusion of control over the government
Governments give citizens the illusion of control so that we don't exercise very real control that we do actually have. But sometimes, we break the fourth wall. Need I mention Syriza...?
I don't think they've got a leg to stand on. (IANAL, although I did a course on human anatomy at university, so I know what legs look like.) First up, you don't need to include the term "your statutory rights are not affected" for your statutory rights not to be affected. This is a business-to-consumer relationship, so all consumer law still applies. Secondly, the wording of that agreement is tremendously vague. "used funds appropriately" -- just what is the legal definition of "appropriately"? I mean, it's clear that buying a Ferrari would be inappropriate, and it's clear that buying the PCBs would be appropriate, but the line between is so fuzzy as to bring us right back to "statutory rights". Now these guys have admitted to: A) failing to engage a suitably experienced project manager and B) commissioning code for a component that they could never afford to use. They failed to do the most basic of due diligence, and thus frittered away other people's money... inappropriately. And now they appear to be writing off the cost of their failure to follow basic good management practice out of other people's money, rather than carrying the costs of their own mistakes.
Exactly. There pitch was: "we had an idea for a straightforward product. It worked. Now we want to do something several orders of magnitude more complicated, and we know we can do it, because we did something much, much simpler before."
Bennet thinks anything that treasures from his childhood is a "cartoon". He can still hear his mother shouting up the stairs at him to "stop watching cartoons and get a job". Not figuratively.
Yes figuratively. Now she literally shouts down the stairs.
Is it fair use? Certainly not, but Saban eventually reversed course and gave permission for the thing to exist. So now it's back up.
Really? They did? Then they're utterly mad, because Power Rangers is a brand still actively sold to kids. To have a video online using the Power Rangers name full of words like "motherfucker" and "cunt" has the potential to cause serious damage to their brand.
They should take the free publicity and do something cool with a brand they aren't doing much with.
Are you sure they're not doing much with it? I haven't kept track, but it seems like there's a new Power Rangers series every year. I'm pretty sure they're still milking it.
[The fourth fair use factor] requires courts to consider not only the extent of market harm caused by the particular actions of the alleged infringer, but also "whether unrestricted and widespread conduct of the sort engaged in by the defendant . . . would result in a substantially adverse impact on the potential market" for the original.
Since the work is blatantly made without the desire of monetary feedback, is not intended to supersede or replace any of the extant or future productions of the original work or author, and has done nothing but bring attention to the original work through this parody, the fourth factor of fair use is satisfied.
You're ignoring the important part of the text you quoted my emphasis:
"whether unrestricted and widespread conduct of the sort engaged in by the defendant . . . would result in a substantially adverse impact on the potential market"
The effect of this single video maybe negligible, but if everyone did it, it may well dilute the brand.
It doesn't matter that their monopoly is a consequence of their competition being so bad -- they still have a monopoly, and therefore should be subject to scrutiny.
Someone who is paying $10 for 5 stickers is not doing it for the stickers. They are
doing it for the hopeful chance that it suceeds. As they are basically doing a donation
there should be no problem with the "low stakes for high odds". For the 10% off retail
then it better be an amazing product ("good return") or a high chance of success otherwise
you need more than a 10% discount to account for the risk.
And yet a hell of a lot of projects offer *no* discount, particularly ones involving hardware, and people continue to back them.
Does Google have an army, air force, navy and marines and nukes?
No, but they do have a stranglehold on the search market. France, on the other hand, has an army, air force, navy and nukes; but no stranglehold on the search market.
I believe the entire point of Kickstarter is to find funding for things that have never been done before. Banks are quite happy to loan money for tried and tested business ideas.
No, it's to find funding for "things". Some of those things include reprints of cult comics -- things that have most definitely been done before.
And FYI, Kickstarter is not a donation platform as evidenced by the dozens of angry posts about "we want full refund."
Actually it is. The people demanding a full refund either don't know that (because they didn't bother to read) or they DO know that but choose to act as if they don't.
Actually, it's not. Legally, you're buying the promised rewards. If you order a book from a mail-order company, they have a duty to either deliver or provide a refund... unless they go bankrupt. Same with Kickstarter projects -- see the Ts&Cs
When a project is successfully funded, the creator must complete the project and fulfill each reward. Once a creator has done so, they’ve satisfied their obligation to their backers.
[kickstarter's emphasis]
That's pretty unequivocal -- there's a legal contract between Triggertrap and the backers to supply the promised product. 20% refund just doesn't cut it -- if they can't build the Ada, they're going to have to return 100%.
Sometimes, it's just plain good to kickstart something even if it looks unlikely they will reach the goal. I would argue that is what happened in this case, because they found out a LOT about making this thing a lot of people want, and are sharing what they found. Eventually the thing people really wanted may well get made. If I had contributed to this Kickstarter (I did not) I wouldn't be mad, just a bit sad it didn't go through.
What they "found", you say, as though it's all over. As microfunding is illegal as investment in the US, Kickstarter projects are contracts of sale under US law. Under the Ts & Cs of the site, it is made clear that the project owners have a duty to deliver the promised rewards. With T-shirts and stickers, that's trivially easy -- with a product that was largely theoretical at the time of project launch, not so much.
Triggertrap have set themselves up for potential class action from the Kickstarter backers -- from TFA:
And so we only have one option left: Refund the remainder of the money we raised from Kickstarter to our Kickstarter backers, and double down on Triggertrap Mobile.
So they're returning what's left of the Kickstarter pot, but no, that's not their only option -- it's not even a legal option. Once you get funded via a Kickstarter project, you have to honour the contract, and there are three ways that can pan out: 1) you deliver the product; 2) you refund 100% of the money; 3) the customer accepts your offer of an alternative product of equal or greater value. If you cannot honour the contract, there's only one remedy: insolvency.
It is clear from the article that Triggertrap is a single company, and that Ada was a project carried out by Triggertrap -- as can be seen in this passage:
But Triggertrap is a going concern; We have hundreds of thousands of customers around the world, and more than a million photographs are taken with Triggertrap’s Mobile products every month. If we commit to delivering Triggertrap Ada, there’s an extremely good chance that the company won’t survive. If that happens, we don’t just let down our Kickstarter backers; We also let down the six-figure number of customers we have around the world, the Triggertrap staff lose their jobs, and it all grinds to a halt. That simply cannot happen on my watch.
If Triggertrap Ada had been set up as a separate LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Triggertrap, they would be able to declare the subsidiary insolvent and the liability would be lost as the company folded, and debts would be written off. However, as long as Triggertrap continues to trade, the liabilities persist, and paying back 20% isn't going to cut it with the buyers.
I say this as someone who is currently developing some hardware and it's close to production ready. I'm also mulling a kickstarter campaign to get over the last bump.
As people have said elsewhere, Kickstarter makes sense if you have a working prototype and can properly spec up the build costs.
Slashdot Mirror
The open sourcing was part of the original deal anyway, I believe.
Silicone molds can be cast on 3D prints. It's a very rough-and-ready way to go about manufacture, but it gets the job done.
I'm sure people will be happy to spend an extra $650 so they can recover their original $700
Given the way insurance works psychologically (people are risk-averse more than they are profit-oriented), you'd be surprised how many takers you'd find at a slightly lower price.
Given the poor rate of success of Kickstarter projects, you'd be surprised how much of a loss you'd make at a slightly lower price...
Which would be freakier -- seeing Jesus's face appearing from beneath your melting butter, or a simulacrum of the red face from Mars when you spread out your jam?
Except that a Kickstarter project is a contract between a business and private individuals. Consumer law trumps contract law every time, because even if the contract doesn't state "your statutory rights are not affected", you're statutory rights are not affected -- there are very few situations where a private individual can sign away statutory rights, and in such conditions, you really have to be very explicit about what rights are being signed away.
Kickstarter's boldest of bold text is the statement that the project once funded is obliged to deliver. That, I would argue (IANAL), makes it a contract of sale and subject to commercial law. Right after that sentence it goes on to enumerate remedies if a project can't complete, but by that point, the die is already cast. This hasn't been tested in the courts yet, perhaps because of low levels of loss, but this project has just lost $400K, and the company is still solvent, so there is the real possibility that this could be the first test-case.
They took a straightforward device and decided to make it more complicated. It was not the same product. Triggertrap 1 was a hacked together Arduino device -- the Ada was proper engineering, and there's a major difference there...
But in Kickstarter's case, you never win anything more than you put in -- if on every gamble you either lose or break even, in the long run, you lose.
If it's easy, it should already be in the prototype. You shouldn't need to pick a module after the Kickstarter offering.
Uber claims not to be a taxi company. Unfortunately for companies, the law doesn't always let them choose which laws apply to them.
Citizens have the illusion of control over the government
Governments give citizens the illusion of control so that we don't exercise very real control that we do actually have. But sometimes, we break the fourth wall. Need I mention Syriza...?
I don't think they've got a leg to stand on. (IANAL, although I did a course on human anatomy at university, so I know what legs look like.) First up, you don't need to include the term "your statutory rights are not affected" for your statutory rights not to be affected. This is a business-to-consumer relationship, so all consumer law still applies. Secondly, the wording of that agreement is tremendously vague. "used funds appropriately" -- just what is the legal definition of "appropriately"? I mean, it's clear that buying a Ferrari would be inappropriate, and it's clear that buying the PCBs would be appropriate, but the line between is so fuzzy as to bring us right back to "statutory rights". Now these guys have admitted to: A) failing to engage a suitably experienced project manager and B) commissioning code for a component that they could never afford to use. They failed to do the most basic of due diligence, and thus frittered away other people's money... inappropriately. And now they appear to be writing off the cost of their failure to follow basic good management practice out of other people's money, rather than carrying the costs of their own mistakes.
Exactly. There pitch was: "we had an idea for a straightforward product. It worked. Now we want to do something several orders of magnitude more complicated, and we know we can do it, because we did something much, much simpler before."
Bennet thinks anything that treasures from his childhood is a "cartoon". He can still hear his mother shouting up the stairs at him to "stop watching cartoons and get a job". Not figuratively.
Yes figuratively. Now she literally shouts down the stairs.
Is it fair use? Certainly not, but Saban eventually reversed course and gave permission for the thing to exist. So now it's back up.
Really? They did? Then they're utterly mad, because Power Rangers is a brand still actively sold to kids. To have a video online using the Power Rangers name full of words like "motherfucker" and "cunt" has the potential to cause serious damage to their brand.
Does that go for merchandising? Should I have free rein to make action figures of the Power Rangers and sell them as "derivative works"?
They should take the free publicity and do something cool with a brand they aren't doing much with.
Are you sure they're not doing much with it? I haven't kept track, but it seems like there's a new Power Rangers series every year. I'm pretty sure they're still milking it.
It's not like they've just launched a series called Power Rangers Dino Charge or anything.
Power Rangers is definitely, definitely trademarked. Trademarked to the hilt.
[The fourth fair use factor] requires courts to consider not only the extent of market harm caused by the particular actions of the alleged infringer, but also "whether unrestricted and widespread conduct of the sort engaged in by the defendant . . . would result in a substantially adverse impact on the potential market" for the original.
Since the work is blatantly made without the desire of monetary feedback, is not intended to supersede or replace any of the extant or future productions of the original work or author, and has done nothing but bring attention to the original work through this parody, the fourth factor of fair use is satisfied.
You're ignoring the important part of the text you quoted my emphasis:
"whether unrestricted and widespread conduct of the sort engaged in by the defendant . . . would result in a substantially adverse impact on the potential market"
The effect of this single video maybe negligible, but if everyone did it, it may well dilute the brand.
It doesn't matter that their monopoly is a consequence of their competition being so bad -- they still have a monopoly, and therefore should be subject to scrutiny.
Someone who is paying $10 for 5 stickers is not doing it for the stickers. They are doing it for the hopeful chance that it suceeds. As they are basically doing a donation there should be no problem with the "low stakes for high odds". For the 10% off retail then it better be an amazing product ("good return") or a high chance of success otherwise you need more than a 10% discount to account for the risk.
And yet a hell of a lot of projects offer *no* discount, particularly ones involving hardware, and people continue to back them.
Does Google have an army, air force, navy and marines and nukes?
No, but they do have a stranglehold on the search market. France, on the other hand, has an army, air force, navy and nukes; but no stranglehold on the search market.
What was your point...?
I believe the entire point of Kickstarter is to find funding for things that have never been done before. Banks are quite happy to loan money for tried and tested business ideas.
No, it's to find funding for "things". Some of those things include reprints of cult comics -- things that have most definitely been done before.
And FYI, Kickstarter is not a donation platform as evidenced by the dozens of angry posts about "we want full refund."
Actually it is. The people demanding a full refund either don't know that (because they didn't bother to read) or they DO know that but choose to act as if they don't.
Actually, it's not. Legally, you're buying the promised rewards. If you order a book from a mail-order company, they have a duty to either deliver or provide a refund... unless they go bankrupt. Same with Kickstarter projects -- see the Ts&Cs
When a project is successfully funded, the creator must complete the project and fulfill each reward. Once a creator has done so, they’ve satisfied their obligation to their backers.
[kickstarter's emphasis]
That's pretty unequivocal -- there's a legal contract between Triggertrap and the backers to supply the promised product. 20% refund just doesn't cut it -- if they can't build the Ada, they're going to have to return 100%.
Sometimes, it's just plain good to kickstart something even if it looks unlikely they will reach the goal. I would argue that is what happened in this case, because they found out a LOT about making this thing a lot of people want, and are sharing what they found. Eventually the thing people really wanted may well get made. If I had contributed to this Kickstarter (I did not) I wouldn't be mad, just a bit sad it didn't go through.
What they "found", you say, as though it's all over. As microfunding is illegal as investment in the US, Kickstarter projects are contracts of sale under US law. Under the Ts & Cs of the site, it is made clear that the project owners have a duty to deliver the promised rewards. With T-shirts and stickers, that's trivially easy -- with a product that was largely theoretical at the time of project launch, not so much.
Triggertrap have set themselves up for potential class action from the Kickstarter backers -- from TFA:
And so we only have one option left: Refund the remainder of the money we raised from Kickstarter to our Kickstarter backers, and double down on Triggertrap Mobile.
So they're returning what's left of the Kickstarter pot, but no, that's not their only option -- it's not even a legal option. Once you get funded via a Kickstarter project, you have to honour the contract, and there are three ways that can pan out: 1) you deliver the product; 2) you refund 100% of the money; 3) the customer accepts your offer of an alternative product of equal or greater value. If you cannot honour the contract, there's only one remedy: insolvency.
It is clear from the article that Triggertrap is a single company, and that Ada was a project carried out by Triggertrap -- as can be seen in this passage:
But Triggertrap is a going concern; We have hundreds of thousands of customers around the world, and more than a million photographs are taken with Triggertrap’s Mobile products every month. If we commit to delivering Triggertrap Ada, there’s an extremely good chance that the company won’t survive. If that happens, we don’t just let down our Kickstarter backers; We also let down the six-figure number of customers we have around the world, the Triggertrap staff lose their jobs, and it all grinds to a halt. That simply cannot happen on my watch.
If Triggertrap Ada had been set up as a separate LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Triggertrap, they would be able to declare the subsidiary insolvent and the liability would be lost as the company folded, and debts would be written off. However, as long as Triggertrap continues to trade, the liabilities persist, and paying back 20% isn't going to cut it with the buyers.
This could still kill Triggertrap...
I say this as someone who is currently developing some hardware and it's close to production ready. I'm also mulling a kickstarter campaign to get over the last bump.
As people have said elsewhere, Kickstarter makes sense if you have a working prototype and can properly spec up the build costs.