Over 100 Internet Companies Call On FCC To Protect The Open Internet

from the don't-fail-us-fcc dept

As the net neutrality debate has kicked into overdrive, over 100 internet companies -- including most of the big names such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Netflix, Amazon, Ebay, Reddit, Automattic, Yahoo, Kickstarter, as well as many smaller names, such as us here at Floor64/Techdirt -- have all signed onto a letter to the FCC asking it to actually suck it up and protect the open internet. Consider this a warning shot to the FCC from the internet community. The community knows what's at stake in this fight and it's watching closely what the FCC does. Having helped to get some of the companies to sign on, I can say that many leaders at companies are both very informed on the topic, and very engaged about it. If the FCC thinks it can sneak one by the tech community, that may be more difficult than it expects.

Along those lines, one FCC commissioner, Jessica Rosenworcel, has suggested that the FCC should put the brakes on its net neutrality plans to think things through a bit more carefully -- though apparently FCC boss Tom Wheeler has rejected that idea and plans to move forward with his rule-making proposal next week.

Filed Under: broadband, fcc, jessica rosenworcel, net neutrality, open internet, silicon valley, tech industry, tom wheeler
Companies: amazon, automattic, ebay, facebook, floor64, google, kickstarter, microsoft, netflix, reddit, twitter, yahoo

Washington State Files First Consumer Protection Lawsuit Against Kickstarter Project That Failed To Deliver

from the don't-kickstart-if-you-don't-plan-to-deliver? dept

I've backed a few dozen Kickstarter projects over the years, and there have always been questions about possible fraudulent projects. While I've personally found that nearly every project delivers late (often very, very late), I don't think any of the projects I've backed has completely failed to deliver (there are a couple I'm still waiting on, though...). Still, the risk of such a "default" is always a possibility, and that's always been the case. Backing a product at an early stage always comes with the risk that it may never deliver. Kickstarter itself has tried to do a better job in making people aware of this upfront with its "Kickstarter is not a store" claims.

However, Washington State's Attorney General has decided to file a consumer protection lawsuit against one project that failed to deliver.

The state’s top lawyer, Bob Ferguson, said Thursday his office has filed the first consumer-protection complaint in the U.S. to target a Kickstarter fraud.

The lawsuit alleges Edward Polchlopek III and his company, Nashville, Tenn-based Altius Management, in 2012 raised more than $25,000 from 810 people in order to print a deck of “retro-horror”-themed cards designed by a Serbian artist.

Among those backers were 31 living in Washington state, according to the suit, which was filed in King County Superior Court.

As the actual filing notes, two years later, nothing has been delivered and no money has been returned. Rather than just seeking the return of the $25,000, the lawsuit asks for $2,000 per each backer, meaning that Altius Management may be on the hook for a potential $1.6 million.

I'm a bit torn about this. As the lawsuit points out, under Kickstarter's terms and conditions, project creators "are legally bound to fulfill backer rewards if funding is successful." And going after actual fraud seems like a good thing. But there's also a risk here. Any project might not get completed for any number of reasons -- sometimes beyond a project creators' control. In fact, we've had stories of failed Kickstarter projects.

This is the nature of innovation. An idea is great, but execution is the really challenging part, and almost everyone underestimates the importance of execution. That's one of the clear risks in both creating and backing a Kickstarter project. While it seems reasonable to go after clear cases of fraud -- in which the creator had no intention to ever deliver a product, it gets a lot more complicated in cases where unforeseen circumstances resulted in the project falling apart. Should projects that discover too late that their plans were too ambitious also face the risk of millions of dollars in liability? Such a threat could cast a real chill on the crowdfunding space that has been so important for so many.

So while I think fraud charges may be appropriate in extreme cases, where it can be shown that there was never any real intent to deliver a product, there is a real risk that these could spread to the other kinds of cases, where it was just a botched execution -- and that could really do a lot of harm to an important emerging market for creativity and innovation.

Filed Under: bob ferguson, crowdfunding, edward polchlopek, fraud, scams, washington
Companies: altius management, kickstarter

DailyDirt: Kinda Crazy Options For Personal Transportation

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The future once promised us flying cars and space hotels, but those ultra-modern conveniences haven't quite panned out (yet). Still, engineers are working on some pretty wacky transportation concepts, and personal flying devices aren't quite so impractical anymore. There are a lot of bugs to work out (and maybe some FAA regulations to comply with), but flying without a plane could be a novelty that almost anyone could try someday soon. Here are just a few examples of personal transportation that might be an exciting experience.

• Personal jetpacks have been around for a while -- remember the James Bond movie Thunderball from 1965? An improved vest jetpack project has started building a prototype that can fly for about 4 minutes (8 times longer than the Thunderball jetpack, untethered) with cheaper and safer fuel. Unfortunately, it didn't meet its Kickstarter goal. [url]
• A 530-lb Exosuit is a personal submarine that lets you dive to depths of about 1,000 feet for 50 hours. Exactly one suit exists right now, and it cost around $600,000 to make. [url]
• How would you like to dangle from a couple of remote-controlled (toy?) helicopters in order to fly from point A to point B? The flight can only last about 30 seconds or so, and if you weigh more than a hundred pounds or so, you might want to try adding another helicopter (or combine a handful of quadcopters).... [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: exosuit, flight, helicopter, james bond, jetpack, quadcopter, remote control, submarine, thunderball, transportation
Companies: kickstarter

DailyDirt: Getting Into Space

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The cost of putting something into space has been getting a bit cheaper over time, but it's still not exactly affordable (unless you count the helium balloons that can reach altitudes of around 100,000 feet or roughly 30 km). The edge of space is generally considered to be about 100 km (~62 miles or ~330,000 feet) up. Here are just a few projects making some progress in getting stuff into space on the cheap.

• The International Space Station is scheduled to launch 33 cubesats into space. Some of these tiny satellites will be used for detailed imaging of the Earth's surface, and a couple of these cubesats will make Lithuania and Peru into spacefaring nations for the first time. [url]
• The concept of a space cannon that can shoot things into space isn't new, but a guy from Canada wants to build one in his backyard. Richard Graf has a Kickstarter project, looking for $65,000 to help him continue his work. [url]
• Virgin Galactic is getting closer to being able to offer commercial space flights to passengers (maybe later this year?). Virgin Galactic's third supersonic test flight for SpaceShipTwo has reached an altitude of 71,000 feet, its highest flight yet. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: cubesat, iss, richard graf, satellites, space, space cannon, spaceflight, spaceshiptwo, suborbital missions, supersonic, virgin galactic
Companies: kickstarter, virgin galactic

Watch One Kickstarter Creator Self-Destruct As People Call Him Out For Scam Project

from the borderline-scams dept

There have been a few stories over the past year or so of Kickstarter projects simply taking products found elsewhere (often China) slapping a new label on them and claiming they're new. This pretty clearly violates Kickstarter rules, which includes the following:

Projects cannot resell items or offer rewards not produced by the project or its creator.

There have been a few cases in the past where this has popped up. Last year there was the Ambiolight and earlier this year there was the machined gamers dice -- both of which were called out by people in the comments as being mere reselling of products made by others already on the market.

It appears that others keep trying to do these kinds of reseller setups, tricking users along the way. A few weeks ago, I saw the projects for "Full of Fuel" external batteries. I have a bit of an obsession with external battery packs, and have been personally using a fantastic Anker Astro Pro 20,000mAh battery -- which looked nearly identical to one of the Fuel of Fire batteries. The other two Fuel of Fire batteries also looked like other external batteries already on the market. Thankfully, plenty of people started pointing out similar things in the comments. The guy behind the project initially defended it, claiming that they had "changed the design" but many didn't believe it. The guy behind the project apparently promised to send a sample to one of the most vocal critics to prove that it was different... but then stopped responding altogether, and the project was cancelled (apparently by Kickstarter).

It appears that something similar is happening with the so-called Rock Smartwatch, which launched with a bit of hype, including some odd claims such as that the watch had 1080p resolution (huh? on a watch?!?) and 4GB of RAM. Some folks quickly pointed out that the watch appeared to be nothing more than a rebranded Z3 watch from China. There was a fair bit of evidence to support this. The creator of the project, "Vak Sambath" first started claiming that he was devastated and suggesting that their manufacturing partner had somehow leaked or made different versions of their work. Then he started posting a bizarre "defense" in which he claims to have been "in conversations with our engineers, manufacturers and designers" to then explain why it's different than the Z3. This comment got posted a whole bunch of times... and it also seems to claim that all their work has really been focused on software, suggesting that perhaps they were just using standard Chinese watches and rewriting the software. Of course, if that were true then they should have said so upfront, and his previous claim that seeing the same design elsewhere devastated him and was because of someone in China leaking the designs makes no sense at all. Keep that in mind, because as this story moves forward, there are more and more things that "make no sense at all."

Because, he then posted a different, but equally unintelligible comment claiming those first comments in which he defended the watch weren't really from him, but were because his computer got hacked:

Hey Guys... first and foremost... I'd like to apologize for whatever happened to do. It wasn't me. I wasn't in front of my computer all day. Someone got into my account. When it rains it pours guys. This is the real Vak. My account got hacked from some freaking hot mess reason. This hasn't been easy.

Later he came back and again defended the watch, while admitting that it does not have 1080p, but not explaining why he'd made that claim originally (or apologizing for the blatantly false advertising, which seems like an FTC violation). Then he tried again by claiming that most people are just too dumb to understand what they're doing, and saying that people "who don't like change" are too critical:

We appreciate kickstarter for allowing small companies to enter new markets with new ideas, that may not be popular with a small sector that does not like change.

The rock is taking a more innovative approach that some may find hard to understand since it is a new direction.

He also keeps talking up patents that the company has, which supposedly distinguishes the watch from its competitors. Except when people in the comments asked him which patents Vak responded by claiming the patents were proprietary so he couldn't share them and telling critics to contact the company's lawyers. Uh, that's not how patents work. If you have a patent it's public. That's one of the key points of a patent in the first place, to disclose to the public. It's possible that they have patent applications that haven't been published yet, but having an application is very different than claiming you have a patented technology. Then there's his attempt to explain why he won't give a straight answer, claiming that if you email his legal team they'll give answers but that "the comment section is not an appropriate platform to voice speculation, since there are many experts as pyntail,engineers and large companies involved." I've read this comment over and over again and it's totally nonsensical. First of all, the comments are exactly the right platform for backers to ask these kinds of questions to make sure they're not getting scammed, and no one's asking him to "speculate," but rather to answer some basic questions concerning the product he claims to be selling. How could anyone think it's appropriate when being quizzed about questions on your own product that only you should be able to answer, to instead claim that it's inappropriate to engage in speculation. And, um, if there are many "experts" then that seems like all the more reason to have a full and open discussion.

On Saturday morning, things took an even weirder twist, as Vak suddenly decided to just start posting over and over and over again in the comments pretending that they were getting lots of "great encouragement" from their backers, and those backers were asking questions. So he started answering them, but each time he posted, plenty of critics just kept commenting about Vak's own ridiculous claims and calling out that the whole thing was a scam. And rather than respond, Vak just kept posting the same exact "email answers" over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, perhaps in the faulty belief that this would somehow drown out all those calling him out.

The other odd thing was that some folks noticed that even as a ton of people bailed from the project earlier in the week, there was suddenly an influx of new buyers, according to Kicktraq's data: But, since Kickstarter shows who backs the projects, some people pointed out that nearly all of the new backers had just joined in December and this was the only project they were backing. For example, here's "Dianne Barrymore" who joined in December, only backed the Rock, and also just happened to post two overly excited comments about it, even after everyone had pointed out the whole thing was likely a scam. Others pointed out that despite all the new backers, the total money raised seemed to be staying about steady, suggesting that many of the new backers may have only contributed the bare minimum of a dollar...

Finally, around noon on Saturday, Kickstarter stepped in and cancelled the deal, at about the same time Vak was insisting the fact that Kickstarter had approved the campaign was proof that it was legit. In an email to backers, Kickstarter's Trust & Safety team admitted that the project clearly violated numbers rules:

A review of the project uncovered evidence of one or more violations of Kickstarter's rules, which include:

• A related party posing as an independent, supportive party in project comments or elsewhere
• Misrepresenting support by pledging to your own project
• Misrepresenting or failing to disclose relevant facts about the project or its creator
• Providing inaccurate or incomplete user information to Kickstarter or one of our partners

Accordingly, all funding has been stopped and backers will not be charged for their pledges. No further action is required on your part.

Vak then went quiet on Kickstarter, but it didn't stop him from continue fighting the bizarre fight on Twitter. First, he pretended that people were just upset because they were "using parts from China." But, of course, that wasn't what anyone was claiming. Then he claimed that what he "learned" from the project is that "what we have isn't for Kickstarter." Yeah, that's not quite what happened there...

Either way, I expect we'll see more of this sort of thing happening over time, but it's kind of neat to see the community itself work all of the details out and help out these questionable projects (even as it's funny to see the project creators try to tap dance around their claims).

Filed Under: vak sambath
Companies: kickstarter

DailyDirt: Get Your Own Satellite

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Private space technology is becoming ever more affordable. Not too long ago, only large governments were able to send stuff into space. Now, large companies can do it, and even some wealthy individuals can control their own satellite (or their own part of one). Here are just a few (more) interesting projects that suggest satellites will be ever more accessible to regular folks (and not just for satellite TV or internet access).

• George Clooney controls a satellite that has spied on Sudan since 2010. The Satellite Sentinel Project promotes human rights by keeping an eye on possible war crimes. [url]
• NASA couldn't continue operating its GALEX satellite due to budget constraints, so it's lending the aging satellite to Caltech to keep it running and observing ultraviolet wavelengths in our galaxy. This is the only satellite currently observing UV events, and this science mission is being privately funded to keep it going. [url]
• The European Student Earth Orbiter (ESEO) mission aims to put a micro-satellite in low Earth orbit to provide students hands-on experience with an active space project. It will be launched in 2015-2016 and stay in orbit for at least 6 months. [url]
• The Arkyd project has succeeded in achieving its Kickstarter goal, making a crowdfunded satellite a reality. Planetary Resources is expected to deliver a functioning satellite sometime around August 2015. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: arkyd, caltech, esa, galex, george clooney, inexpensive space projects, micro-satellite, nasa, satellite, satellite sentinel project, science, space, sudan
Companies: esa, kickstarter, nasa, planetary resources

DailyDirt: Flying Bikes

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Riding a bicycle is a great way to stay fit and healthy, while also helping the environment. For those who feel they need a little assistance on the ground, there are electric bicycles. And then, for those who want to soar above traffic, avoiding congestion, exhaust fumes, and bad drivers, there are flying bicycles. Here are a few examples of some of the latest (totally not dangerous-looking) flying bike prototypes.

• The Canadian AeroVelo team recently reported that their human-powered helicopter, Atlas, flew up to a height of 3.3 meters for about 65 seconds and stayed within a 10-square-meter area. That achievement has won them the $250,000 Igor I. Sikorsky Human-Powered Helicopter Prize from The American Helicopter Society.[url]
• ExploreAir is raising funds on Kickstarter for its Paravelo flying bike that looks like a mashup between a paraglider and a bicycle. It's powered by an electric motor that provides up to 3 hours of flight. Once in the air, the Paravelo can reach a speed of 25 mph and a height of 4,000 feet. [url]
• Three Czech companies recently conducted a test flight of their F-bike with a life-sized dummy in the bike seat. The flying bicycle has 6 horizontal rotors attached to the bike's frame, drawing 47 kW of power from on-board batteries. During the 5-minute flight test, the F-bike was able to lift off, hover, steer, and land (by remote control.) [url]
• German startup e-volo's first manned flight of its VC1 Volocopter in 2011 lasted 90 seconds. The VC1 has 16 individual rotors, and its battery pack has enough power for 20 minutes of flight. E-volo is currently developing the VC200, an electric two-seater that will have 18 rotors and a range extender to recharge the batteries. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: aerovelo, atlas, bicycles, bikes, e-volo, exporeair, flying, helicopter, hoverbike, prototypes, sikorsky prize
Companies: kickstarter

DailyDirt: Bioluminescence

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There's just something really cool about things that glow in the dark. It's even more breathtaking when the glowing originates from living creatures, like fireflies or deep sea fish. While nature uses bioluminescence for purposes such as attracting mates (or prey), humans seem to be more interested in bioengineering plants or animals that glow by using fluorescent proteins from organisms that produce them naturally. Here are some examples of what people are doing with fluorescent proteins.

• The Glowing Plant project is attempting to engineer the Arabidopsis thaliana (thale cress) plant to glow green-blue by giving it some firefly genes. The Kickstarter project raised $484,013, but there are concerns about the project's legality since it involves genetically modifying plants. The Canadian ETC Group, which has a history of opposing synthetic biology applications, has even launched a "kickstopper" campaign to stop the project. [url]
• Japanese researchers have discovered the first fluorescent protein in vertebrates, in the Unagi freshwater eel. While Unagi are considered a delicacy in Japan, very little was known about its biology. To their surprise, the researchers found that bilirubin (the human blood marker for liver function and jaundice) activated the UnaG fluorescent protein's green light emission. So they developed a fast and accurate new clinical test for bilirubin based on it binding to the UnaG protein to turn on its glow. [url]
• Some researchers are looking for ways to use bioluminescence for lighting applications. The main limitation is that fluorescent proteins don't emit enough light to provide a meaningful light source. However, firefly and biolumiscent bacteria genes can be engineered to make the fluorescent proteins shine brighter. Introducing these proteins into trees could then turn them into natural streetlights. [url]
• Researchers in Japan have genetically engineered silkworms to produce red, green, and orange silks that glow under fluorescent lights. They used fluorescent protein genes from Fungia concinna coral (orange), Discoma coral (red), and jellyfish (green). [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: bilirubin, biology, bioluminescence, biotech, firefly, fluorescent, glow in the dark, glowing plant, gmo, protein, silk, silkworms, unagi
Companies: kickstarter