Item — HN Reader

Perhaps Kickstarter needs a project liaison for projects over a certain dollar threshold; people who ask "How is it going? What are you doing?". Kiva does this for the people I lend money to (even though I lend without the expectation of the money ever coming back, I want to know how the borrow is doing regardless of the outcome).

This can be built into the cost of the Kickstarter project, and for projects $100K and above, believe it to be completely reasonable.

1 comments

Kickstarter doesn't want this because it can bring possible liability. They want as little to do as possible with the actual projects success or failure while still seeming to be wanting them to win :)

This isn't copyright law, and turning their head isn't going to remove liability (a la Craigslist sex workers debacle). Good luck arguing financial safe harbor provisions ("we're just a marketplace! It's not our place to regulate!").

Craigslist was never actually found liable that i remember, they settled.

But yes, they are basically trying to present it as a marketplace they have no control over, to avoid liability and getting themselves regulated by the SEC/others.

Whether this is going to be effective, I actually tend to agree with you and think it won't, but it's almost certainly why they are doing it.