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Comment by nostromo | Hacker News Reader

All over $25k? Doesn't that seem much too low to be worth the AG's time? The top reward tier was only $93.

It's hard to imagine a person can even mount a defense against a state AG for less than $25k...

Yes, they f'ed up. But unless it was malicious, this seems like an excessive response. I suspect an AG is trying to make a name for him or herself.

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Or he could be, say, nipping a problem in the bud. There have been a few big but dubious crowdfunded projects recently. If scam artists think they can raise a bunch of money and then say, "oopsie," and have it all be a free pass, there could be a flood of bad projects.

Those interested in reading a history should pick up Joseph "Yellow Kid" Weil's bio: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0767917375/

He was a pioneering American con man. Many of the scams he pulled weren't illegal at the time, so they had to come up with new laws to prevent him and imitators from fleecing more people.

Whether or not this AG knows and cares about limiting criminal innovation, you can be sure some of them do.

It's easy to make an attack on a politician and dismiss things, but I think it's much more likely that someone (Bob Ferguson) is trying to set a precedent on crowdfunding and their obligations to the funders.

Makes sense. But they should wait for a better case.

This seems like a founder that underestimated the amount of time and resources required to start a company and produce a product. It sucks, but it happens.

Maybe a better case would be the guy that lit the backer rewards on fire because he got tired of their pestering. (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/73258510/sad-pictures-f...)

Nah. Ed Nash had the art, he had USPCC print the proofs; the only remaining thing he needed to do was give USPCC money. He didn't. His backer tiers were similar to other card deck backer tiers, so it's not like he didn't get enough money from the Kickstarter. He either kept the money or (more likely) spent it on some other aspect of his promotion business earlier, in the hopes that he'd get the money to print the cards from somewhere else.

Kickstarted card decks are really simple and low risk as long as you have the art. USPCC does a couple of dozen of these every year.

I dunno. If I were the AG, I'd want to go after someone who was mentally competent to defend themselves. Everything I'm reading about this Pictures for Sad Children guy seems to indicate that he's at a minimum severely depressed and perhaps not quite all there. Plus, there seems to be near zero chance of recovering damages, and a default judgement does little to establish precedent.

Yes, but it isn't about going after $25K. It is about protecting everyone else who lives in WA and wants to participant in Kickstarter. The AG is hoping to set a precedent with this case.

Kickstarter's a known internet site so it is probably worth it for the publicity. Its the AG version of a committee meeting calling CEOs for some "wrong doing"[1].

1) note the quotes and yes, I think there is an element besides "guardian of the voters" here.

There wouldn't be a problem if the original kickstarter campaign refunded all the money back to the backers.

How often does this happen? Maybe a better question: has it ever happened that a failed project has refunded all money? I suppose I've been lucky with Kickstarter (and Indiegogo); although several rewards are currently late, it appears that progress is being made and they will be delivered eventually.

I got a refund on one failed project (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/38482230/worldbreakers-...), and as far as I know all the backers got refunds.

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