Yeah, this shouldn't be overlooked.

Kickstarter = funding without having to give anyone a stake.

>The obvious benefit being that you don't actually have to give Kickstarter "investors" any money back.

Shouldn't that make them have strong check and balances in place to help people funding these projects?

You would think...

In an article in the Huffington post a while back, it said the Feds are now going after people who don't follow through. I also hope while they are at it, they can do something to help protect these vulnerable people giving money to support projects without proper education about what they are supporting.

Here is the article -http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/11/feds-regulate-crowd...

The Feds go after people who just walk away with the money. They do not, and should not, go after people who fail to achieve the objective -- that would defeat the point of crowdfunding.

> They do not, and should not, go after people who fail to achieve the objective -- that would defeat the point of crowdfunding.

I agree. But they can somehow force the hands of Kickstarter and its competitors to have some mechanism in place to protect consumers from contributing to such bogus projects. I looked at the Kickstarter page and it seems any creature can post and request their projects be funded. Some of the scam are poorly disguised while others are masterfully disguised such as the one for which the is thread is created.

Sure, some validation is important, and Kickstarter has their own incentive to ensure some baseline quality independent of regulation. Fraudsters should be prosecuted, but I hope that people aren't discouraged from launching Kickstarter initiatives because they're afraid of genuine product execution risk turning into personal criminal or civil liability.

> The obvious benefit being that you don't actually have to give Kickstarter "investors" any money back.

This is pretty interesting, so what's stopping new startups to make apps and publish on kickstarter to avoid paying the investors back later? Also, why do these "investors", more like donors, so willing to throw their money at the screen?

> so what's stopping new startups to make apps and publish on kickstarter to avoid paying the investors back later?

Absolutely nothing, plenty of niche games are funded through Kickstarter.

> why do these "investors", more like donors, so willing to throw their money at the screen?

Because someone is promising to try to build a thing they want, that no professional investor is willing to fund.