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Amazon Stops Processing Payments For Crowdfunding Platform For Creative Commons Books
from the weird dept
So this is a bit strange. Unglue.it is a cool crowdfunding platform that focuses on raising money for authors/rightsholders so that they'll release an edition of their books under a Creative Commons license. We've seen a few similar offerings, but Unglue.it seemed really interesting (and to be getting some attention/traction). Basically, they would work with rightsholders, to find out at what price they'd be willing to put their works out under a Creative Commons license, and then try to crowdfund that amount. Neat idea. However, as Jack Allnutt alerts us, despite having already been processing payments for Unglue.it, Amazon has cut the service off, with a bizarre claim about how they don't want to work with any new crowdfunding platforms:
Amazon Payments has informed us that they will no longer process pledge payments for Unglue.it, forcing us to suspend all active ungluing campaigns. According to a Senior Account Manager at Amazon, Amazon has decided against “boarding fresh crowdfunding accounts at this time”. Amazon has been providing payment services for Unglue.it, as it does for the popular crowdfunding site Kickstarter.Of course, that statement doesn't make much sense, given that it was already processing payments for Unglue.it. In fact, part of this news was that Amazon is requiring Unglue.it to void all payments for existing campaigns (i.e., those not yet funded). So the idea that this is about not "boarding fresh crowdfunding accounts" doesn't make much sense. Amazon has been the only choice for payments on Kickstarter since the beginning, and that seems to have gone well, so it's odd that they're now cutting off others (and, of course, opens up Amazon to wild conspiracy theories). I contacted Amazon to get their side of the story, and they provided the following comment:
We support a wide variety of businesses, but we have regulatory obligations as a licensed money services business for how we operate. Unfortunately, Unglue.it’s model is not the same as some other crowdfunding services and at this time does not allow us to meet those obligations.That statement makes this all the more... confusing. They're clearly implying that there are regulatory issues preventing them from supporting Unglue.it, though I'm not sure I can think of what the concern here might be. There have been some regulatory issues around equity funding via crowdfunding, but that doesn't seem to be an issue here. If they're just working out deals for licensing books... I'm at a complete loss.
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Amazon takes the gold in asshattery
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Re: Amazon takes the gold in asshattery
Also, if that's the real reason they don't want to do it it shows that they're afraid that this has a real future.
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Re: Re: Amazon takes the gold in asshattery
Yeah, media companies have quite the history of going batshit over things that aren't real threats. Witness the histrionics over piracy when the real problem there is their UI sucks harder than that of most pirate sites.
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Re:
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copyright violation
We are filing a RICO Act complaint against you w/ the Calif. AG for illegally posting copyrighted material on the web.
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Re: copyright violation
Thank you for demonstrating once again how wonderfully technologically incompetent you people are. You have given a fine example of why we need to update our legal system. Too many technophobes in the system who can't even find the "contact us" section of a web page.
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Re: Re: copyright violation
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Re: Re: copyright violation
Assuming this isn't just some really poorly done troll, what's funny is that this person is posting under the name H.P. Albarelli Jr., who, according to Albarelli's bio resides in Florida, but is filing allllll the way in Californa. Wonder what the angle is with that one...
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Dear Troll:
Fail.
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Re:
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Amazon!
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There are various laws in the US to try to stop things like money laundering and such. As a result, there is the "know your customer" rules regarding payment processors. They need to know who they are actually paying money to (and for that matter, who they are collecting money from). That has all sorts of implications, including requiring W8 or W9 forms regarding payouts to individuals, groups, or companies that might benefit from the payouts.
If the site isn't very strict about it's payouts (ie, it's unable to provide the processors with end payout users, example), then the processors may not want to deal with them.
It's not about the product - it's about the methods.
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Incompetence, not malice
I can well imagine that they'd cut off an account like Unglue.it just because "computer says no" and then scrabble around trying to justify it rather than fixing the problem which led to the account being flagged in the first place.
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Re: copyright violation
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Amazon has jumped the shark
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So Now We Know Who Really Rules The World ...
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The concerns regarding money laundering and other fiscal avoidance techniques is strong now. They can no longer just hand money to anyone and say "I didn't know what they were doing."
I suspect that it's almost entirely a compliance issue in this area.
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Re: Re: Re:
I wonder how much money-laundering this prevents vs how many start-ups / innovators find themselves unable to realise their idea.
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so now we can guess the next legislative target
My guess is that very soon payment processor regulations will start to forbid them from working with entities who deal or organize trade in bitcoin (or possibly, who even honor it in parallel to normal payments).
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> other fiscal avoidance techniques is strong now.
Your posts are challenging to read. Subject-verb agreement can be your friend. Look into it.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
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Re: Dear Troll:
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Follow Through
Check it out here.
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what constitutes a monopoly?
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monopoly
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