The Internet vs. the NEA: is Kickstarter a secret right-wing plot to undermine the national endowment for the arts?

• Author: Beato, Greg
• Position: Columns - Column

HAS THERE EVER been a better time to be a cobbler in Berlin with a dream to manufacture shoes with the message "Ich bin Atheist" emblazoned on their soles? Or a group of environmentally minded designers and technologists who'd like to establish a community-based air-quality sensing network? Or a Sculptor who creates giant interactive signs aimed at encouraging people to contemplate the impact of capitalism on their lives?

Thanks to Kickstarter, the New York-based crowd-funding website, the visionaries behind these and approximately 20,000 other endeavors have been able to attract enough financial support to turn their dreams into reality. Founded in 2009, Kickstarter allows individuals to publicize creative projects they'd like to pursue. The projects might involve shooting a movie, building a new performance space for a dance company, or manufacturing an open-source espresso machine; you just have to propose something specific.

To attract backers, creators promise rewards for various levels of commitment. In March, for example, a comic book writer named Alex Woolfson sought $7,000 to publish a print edition of his serial web comic, Artifice, a science fiction thriller that features a gay hero. For those who pledged $5 to the project, he promised a PDF version of the story with some special features that had not appeared in the online version. A $20 pledge got the PDF and the print edition of the book. A $450 pledge netted the PDF, three copies of the print edition signed by Woolfson, an original inked page from the book signed by the artist who collaborated with Woolfson on the project, and other inducements. Woolfson reached his $7,000 goal in just 48 hours and ended up attracting 988 backers who pledged a total of $36,551. While his initial goal of $7,000 would have allowed him to print around 1,000 copies of his 120-page comic book, he is now contemplating a run as high as 5,000.

Woolfson's extraordinary success was by no means unprecedented. A remarkable 46 percent of the projects publicized on Kickstarter's site in 2011--11,836 in all--attained their funding goals. On February 8, 2012, the company enjoyed another milestone moment when an industrial designer seeking to create the Great American iPhone Dock became the first Kickstarter creator to secure $1 million in funding. A few hours later, Double Fine Productions, a video game designer, hit the $1 million threshold as well.

In the wake of these successes, Kickstarter co-founder...