An idea and a website to bring back Firefly!
POSTED BY: browncoatsriseagain
UPDATED: Thursday, March 16, 2006 23:06
VIEWED: 28807
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You watch your '6 very carefully BROWNCOATSRISEAGAIN ya hear? PayPal has a long history of stuffing folks just when the gettin's good, especially when it comes to mass donations as would be needed. I said it before, the longer a large sum of money sits in a PayPal account just stagnatin', the juicier the proposition of a 'technical problem' or an 'account red-flag' or some nonsense becomes on PayPal's part.
What.. were.. you.. thinking? Did you read the Terms of Service? You relinquish all rights to the money in that account once it's theirs and they don't mind swinging it in your face from time to time!!
Quote:
PayPal reserves the right to hold funds beyond the normal distribution periods for transactions it deems suspicious or for accounts conducting high transaction volumes to ensure integrity of the funds.
Once other ships know of this, and put their faith in your donation fund, and you get a high volume of donations (say, 500,000 people donating $2_USD each?), you will get shaken un-upright, the account will be frozen, and your chances of getting ... 60% of that money back are slim to none. In fact I believe in a fit of creativity I once said 'a housecat's chance on a Reaver vessel'.
firefly and gor'ram and all the funny-funny aside, you have set yourself up to hurt many’a folk. You would have to get ahold of Joss Whedon personally, and have Joss Whedon get ahold of PayPal, and then you personally get ahold of PayPal, and make this very public, as in Penny Arcade and/or Slashdot 'public' to keep wringing hands and sneering evil away from that money.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/hurricane/0,68788-0.html
http://www.animecornerstore.com/faq.html#5-13
Google 'PayPal scam' or visit PayPalSucks.com and you'll get horror stories aplenty. I gor'ram mean it!! No good will come of putting this in eBay/PayPal's hands.
You're a new face, same as I, and that's gonna make people twitchy, and the last schmuck to come here and link a self-made website on his very first post was the EvolutionSucks.com guy, and he managed to make many friends as well.
I mean you no harm if you mean us no harm - that's how my own personal brand of anarchy (and Confucianism for that matter) works - and I wish you well and success; but get the money in a real gor'ram bank governed by real gor'ram Fed law.
Now, I haven't checked them out, nor ever had a website to use them, but here's the service PayPalSucks.com keeps touting as a viable alternative. It puts money in a real bank account which might make folks ever more twitchy as it would directly go to you, but it's for the best if you mean well.
http://www.995merchantaccounts.com/
You're in over your head with this, even with a website packin' a bit of sparkle. You need to talk to a lawyer about establishing this as a non-profit organization so that the volume of money doesn't then get red-flagged by Internal Revenue and taxed into oblivion, and you need to direct this money into a high-interest savings account so that it's making money even when it's not making money, and you need to get a hold of Joss Whedon and tell him about this in a more or less ‘we can’t not do this’ attitude.
A lot of people want to see this through to victory - maybe I’ll go out on limb and say ‘everybody’ – and the way it’s presentin’ there’s a lot of room for hurtin’, and nobody deserves that.
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I know this is nitpicky, but since you are marketing to a fanatic audience here....the quote on your main page is wrong. Mal actually said "I'm thinkin' we'll rise again."
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"Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells you when she's hurting 'fore she keens. Makes her a home." .......We love you, captain.
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Surely a better plan would be to run something like Pledgebank ( www.pledgebank.com) whereby people sign up to confirm that they would donate money, but don't actually donate it until it actually happens. Obviously you then have the possible issue that people might not live up to their agreements, but you also don't end up with some unknown, untraceable (no offense intended) entity with $25m in an account.
mrben
"Carpe Aptenodytes"
http://www.jedimoose.org
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You're missing something. The cost of sets, costumes etc are split across the cost of a complete season. So $2Million an episode to make could mean $1.5 million for the episode and $0.5M of the $10M to build serenity and pay for office work, titles, advertising, etc.
If the ship cost $3M to build (not unreasonable since they built so much of it) the cost for *1* episode could be $4-5 Million dollars.
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I like the whole idea of putting our money where our mouths are, so to speak. And I like seeing someone trying to get something done, as that's the reason I started cruising the online community. Personally I'm a late-comer to the movement, and since obviously the hard-core fans have already accomplished so much, I'm looking to do my part.
My own two cents worth of ideas: It would obviously help matters if we all knew Mr. Whedon was aware and involved in this. (Also obviously hard to authenticate anything like that via internet.) And also of course this would really have to get rolling I'd imagine before anyone could get his firm approval.
Anyway, stuff I'm sure you'd thought of. What the hell, I got my tax refund coming some time soon...
Again, seems like I feel the same way alot of the other posters do. Once everyone is sure you're on the up and up, and that this has a snowball's chance, (Browncoats don't like good odds anyways :) sounds like a pretty good idea.
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This is all way over my head, but isn't there some way we could start an account in Joss' name with the stipulation that the money has to be used to bring back Firefly in some aspect. Something sort of like a trust that he would only be able to access when there was a concrete plan for how everything is going to play out. Just a thought.
"Pain is scary." -Jayne
Mal=Hotness on an unknown level
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I agree with those who stated the facts about paypal and other scams because it would be a lot of money in one account. But why not make multiple accounts or multiple webpages and make a crew of browncoats in charge of the money and just so as not to get the accounts frozen on account of not using them, why not use a small percentage of them to pay for ad space on other web pages totally unrelated to Firefly and Serenity. You can have one major central web page that keeps a running total of the money from all the websites and what they are doing. When the time comes to dangle that money in front of Universal, then you collectively combine it.
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First, thanks to all of you for taking the time to respond and respond in depth.
Believe me, we have pondered all of the issues that all you all have brought up. Here is what I am thinking.
I wanted to get the website up and running as quickly as possible. We could have been mired in legal and money issues until the cows come home. This forces several things to happen...
When this idea takes off, the money will not stay with Paypal. It will get moved to a real bank with real money and will be in the name of a non-profit organization that I am getting setup right now.
It gets the idea out to the Browncoats where they can help shape and create it in their own image rather than a lawyer's. I'm a big boy and know I can get into legal trouble. Not all of life is about avoiding trouble - isn't that why we like this show?
Finally, I doubt our true captain, Joss, will be able to say publicly or privately that he supports this venture for fear of money and legal issues.
That is why we have to TRULY misbehave. We are going to have to go against what society tells us, what the naysayers will tell us, and even what Joss or Mutant Enemy might tell us.
It is up to us. We can hope for the future of this 'verse or we can actively fight for it.
If you feel moved, donate. If you don't, please don't but let us know what stopped you.
I know you don't me personally. I will be adding a bio page to our website. I will be participating on these boards. I will be pursuing interviews and publicity for this cause. When I decide to do something, I do it until it is done.
I ask you to join me...
Andrew
www.browncoatsriseagain.com
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no offense but how do we know thats where the money goes?
~~River: Bible's broken. Contradictions, false logics. Doesn't make sense.~~
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Quote:
Originally posted by imaleaf:
no offense but how do we know thats where the money goes?
The short answer is there is no good way to prove to you that I am honest as you don't know me. I will be letting you folks get to know me and I will be here for the long haul.
If you are feeling skittish, please don't donate. As you see this site build and get more public, those butterflies will probably go away. Donate then.
I am not going to touch this money ever. It's not mine. I am just a steward of it for a short time.
How's that for a short answer that turned medium-long?
Andrew
www.browncoatsriseagain.com
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