Being an artist these days is as tough as ever. With competition for artistic creations growing larger every day, there comes a need for alternative methods to get creative ideas across to the mainstream. Enter Kickstarter, a website created in 2009 dedicated to helping the small time art projects get noticed. As of late 2013, over 45,000 projects have been posted, with an astonishing figure of over 600 million dollars given by backers across the world.

The process is relatively simple. A person with an artistic idea can go on Kickstarter, create a fundraiser for their project (with a page explaining the purpose of a project, usually including a video message from the artist), and set a reasonable goal for money raised. The project is looked at and approved by a committee for backing, to give legitimacy to the website.  The caveat for backers is that the creator is obligated to give back gifts, as a thank you for the funding money. These gifts are proportionate to the amount of money given, ranging from a name credit on a website to an actual piece of the project itself.

One famous example of a Kickstarter success is the Pebble Smart Watch, a watch-phone precursor to the Samsung Galaxy Gear, which raised over 10 million dollars for its fundraiser. Others include the IPod-charging Elevation Dock, the Android-Powered gaming system Ouya and the video game Wasteland 2. All of these projects received over 1 million dollars in funding.

This all seems fine, right? Well, one main gripe may come on the Kickstarter website in the “Seven Things to Know” section. The section preaches things like democracy in funding as well as independent creation. It looks good until you get to the fourth point: “Creators keep 100% ownership of their work.”

What that says, basically, is if creators want to use the money for their project, they can do that. However, if they want to keep the money for their own usage, there is no regulation that prevents that from happening once the money is raised.

For example, I could go on today and start a project for the “Great North Penn Art exhibit” and have people fund it. If I made 2,500 dollars cash from this, I could give gifts with no monetary value, such as a simple cut-and-paste “thank you” email, and end up with the money myself without any way to stop me. The website preaches that “Backers are supporting projects to help them come to life, not to profit financially.” Yet the committee that votes on projects isn’t as regulatory as most people would think, letting many shady projects slip through their fingertips.

A few projects have been caught as fraudulent by the Kickstarter committee. One such fraud is the project “Kobe Red,” which was supposed to make beef jerky out of Kobe beef. The project rose over $100,000 before being canceled. With the Kickstarter committee only cancelling a little over 15 projects, concerns have been raised about the committee’s filtering system. The Better Business Bureau agreed, giving the website its lowest possible rating of an “F” for their mishandlings.

So what is to make of it? Is it a tool to help creative projects find new light that it wouldn’t find otherwise, or just another way for nobodies to make some fast cash?  I would like to think that it is helping creativity, as Kickstarter isn’t designed to be a scam site. It’s only the people who would find ways to scam people regardless of method that are hurting the system. However, I can’t help to think there need to be some changes made. If the committee looking over projects was a little less forgiving on projects that don’t aim to give respect to its backers, as well as fixing the damaged rewards system, I would strongly recommend Kickstarter to anyone looking to share their creativity with the world.