4 ms·

I agree that funders should not expect a reward for their pledge. However, it is simply not true that it is "obligation-free". This is inaccurate. Kickstarter

• jacquesm 3y ago
  Yes, but they write that to cover their own ass, note that they claim that they are not a party in the agreement between the project initiator and the backer and this is their way of ramming that point home so they can say 'see: it wasn't us, we are not responsible even though we took receipt of the money so you can't reclaim it from us if it doesn't work out'. And anybody can be subject to legal action for any reason at any time. Whether it sticks or not is another thing and since there is no agreement between backer and initiator (no matter how much Kickstarter would like that to be, they are 'the merchant of record' and so are effectively on the hook). If Kickstarter pays out and the backers charge back (which is an operational risk for any party such as Kickstarter and one way in which they can be defrauded) they would have a very hard time recovering the funds from the initiator for that exact reason. So this whole thing assumes a lot of trust and goodwill on all sides and is legally more than just a little bit gray. And that's why they are very, very careful not to label anybody a 'buyer'. Because buyers have rights, backers do not.
  • cromulent 3y ago
    Creators have obligations. This is true whether they are legally enforceable or not.
    • jacquesm 3y ago
      Morally they do, yes. And even legally they probably do, there have been some cases of successful legal action. But not enough of these to matter to the point that you could say that Kickstarter initiators are structurally on the hook, rather the opposite. Morally the backers also have obligations: they should research the initiators, but almost nobody ever does. They should reflect on the feasibility of the proposal, but instead the 'it would be great to have this' feeling combined with 'wow, that's cheap, they can't possibly make it for that kind of money so let's back this' is a near certain path to disappointment. Kickstarter is the main party that has obligations but they disavow all of these and obviously they have the legal backing to ensure they are not on the hook for any of this. On top of that they keep backers structurally in the dark about the risks. Edit: a short afterword: I've had many, many requests to do a Kickstarter for the Lego sorting machine. I could have raised millions of $ with ease for this project. And I didn't do it. The reasons why are because I know the difference between making a prototype and making something aimed at the general public, I realized that people's expectations of delivery are unrealistically high because there are a lot of unknowns in a project like that and finally that I would not want to risk my reputation and existing business on a project like that. But not all Kickstarter initiators have that much experience in industry and even if they self evaluate to 'I can do this' it may simply not be true in practice. This is the bulk of the Kickstarters that fail on the delivery. To then demand the money back would put these people in a hole that they won't recover from for the rest of their lives. So the default should be: project fails, backers lose their $ because the same thing that allows Kickstarters to succeed is what would put the initiators of failed projects in the poorhouse: it's $50 for you but $50,000 for the initiator (or more) and once that money is sunk it is not recoverable.