Facts of the Case

The growth of user generated online content has made crowd funding websites, such as

Kickstarter, RocketHub, GoFundMe and IndieGoGo, to become popular outlets for financing

independent projects. While the details of how crowdfunding tools function vary from site to

site, they mainly consist of a project creator posting a pitch for a project on a crowdfunding

website with an explanation of what they want to do in creating the project. The creators then

offer their backers rewards for various donation levels. For instance, backers who provide 30

dollars for a music project might have their name in a special thank you section of the music’s

credit. Backers who give $60 might receive a copy of the music. The creators generate a

fundraising goal as well as the start and the conclusion dates for their campaigns. Following the

ending date, no more funds can be contributed. The creators using Kickstarter do not receive any

of the pledged funds when they fail to attain their fundraising goals and the funds pledged are

never transferred from the backers to the creators. While some Kickstarter projects have

successful, some have faced criticism. Amanda Palmer raised $1.2 million (with a $100,000

target) for her new album. Although she completed and released the album, critics questions her

expenditure of the funds. For instance, she spend more than necessary on the CDs and records

that were sent to backers (Jefferson, 2012). The case of Amanda Palmer highlights an instance of

ethical issue facing the artists, backers and the crowd funding websites.

The first ethical concern is related to transparency when it comes to handling the funds.

There lacked a checks and balance system that ensured funds are directed towards the projects

intended goals. Although the artist request for funds for many reasons, the backers are compelled

to fund the reasons they consider relevant. In the case study, Amanda launched a campaign to

fund her upcoming album release and tour entitled, Theatre is Evil. Her goal was $100,000
which she made within hours of the launch. By the end of the campaign shed had received

almost twelve time her original goal. However, it was not clear to the backers that Amanda

actually spend the funds on her album release. Palmer was an ethical dilemma on how to spend

the funds without generating conflicts. The backers may feel betrayed and deceived when palmer

diverts the generated funds to other goals. Palmer admitted to spending the extra funds on her

personal expenses and needs not associated with her goals for requesting funds. This results to

majority of the backers to start questioning the integrity and honesty of Palmer in offering

incentives for her albums. Some backer may be in a dilemma to whether or not to support such

projects in the future based on Palmer’s case. It is unethical to spend the funds for other reasons

since the audience and the backers may feel manipulated.

The second ethical concern is whether Kickstarter should limit the fund to generated

goals. While Palmer’s initial goal was raise $100,000, she ended making almost twelve times her

original goals. Critics will argue that the backers are taking money away from other projects to

be funded which have not attained their gaols when they give Palmer more than her goal.

However, should Kickstarter have the motivation to limit donation beyond the original goals as

they receive the percentage of all the donations. The third ethical concern is related to Palmer’s

ethical virtues in the way she treats the musicians that helped her to promote her album. Despite

having more than enough money, Palmer appears to lack empathy when she decides not to

compensate the band for their services and rather offers them cheap things that do not

accumulate to their labour. The final ethical concern is connected to the regulation of the

advertised projects. The critics consider it not fair for famous artists to use crowdfunding. Since

crowdfunding is concern with popularity and effective marketing, any famous artist has

advantages when it comes to these aspects. As such, critics argue that Kickstarter neglected its
responsibility by allowing the famous artists to launch campaigns through their platforms.

However, the crowdfunding website is held between considering the contributors’ claims and

losing businesses that are brought by such artist as they attract new backers.

Deontology

The deontological ethical theory calls for individuals to adhere to their duties when

assessing an ethical dilemma. This implies that people should follow their obligation to society

or other people as upholding one’s responsibility is what is correct ethically. Duty based

theoretical approaches focus on whether people believe an action is wrong or right. It means that

when faced with upholding one’s duty, people are to follow their requirements over personal

feelings. As such, when people follow the tenants of the deontological theory, they become

consistent in decision towards which duties are then aligned. Kant is the established

deontological philosopher who posited that duty itself implies the necessity to perform an action

out of respect for the law. Kohlberg’s (1969) stages of moral development model argue that

moral judgment is a critical component of ethical decision making and age plays a significant

part. Moral and ethical decision making is the actual choice and not a potential choice made

between two or more alternatives. These decision propels people to make trade-offs among

multiple moral values (Wiss et al. 2015, p.493). The context of beneficence, an ethical principle

that guides the moral theory to do what is good is the most closely related with deontology. Kant

(1959) believes that is a priority of doing good in the performance of an individual’s duty which

enable the person to face any situation armed with an ethical perspective and possible solutions
to an ethical dilemma. The theoretical model of duty develops the concept of doing well. Doing

well is concerned with striving to attain the best outcome for the largest number of people.

Therefore, the duties of Palmer and Kickstarter should be perfect and definite according to Kant.

Although deontology are positive, there are flaws within its aspects. Close and Meier

(1995) highlight how the basis of deciding Palmer’s duties cannot be logically founded or

rationalized because of the influence of her characteristics. Specifically, this theory fails to help

the audience understand the reasoning and logic used by Palmer to make her decision since her

duty conflicts with the other moral obligation. Palmer recognized that there was more attention

focused on her but she kept operating the same way she had for the previous decade (Brandle

2013). Palmer has been performing since 2000 as a member of the duo The Dresden Dolls.

Though her practices had not changed significantly, the reaction has changed dramatically.

Palmer was heavily criticized for soliciting voluntary help from local musicians while on tour

after receiving the money. The conflicting obligation do not allow for a concise ethical

resolution, although under deontological premise, by the nature of the amount raised, Palmer

should spend the money she raised as part of her campaign to pay the artists.

Besides, the deontologists would argue that Kickstarters have the moral duty help those

without publicity or not famous, over helping the prominent artist generate funds. The

deontologist consider it not fair for famous artists to use crowdfunding. Since crowdfunding is

concern with popularity and effective marketing, any famous artist has advantages when it comes

to these aspects. As such, deontologist argue that Kickstarter neglected its responsibility by

allowing the famous artists to launch campaigns through their platforms. Deontological

principles do not account for prima facie duties or the performance of functions in the face of

personal obligations and conducts, finally attained without conflicting with other absolute needs.
Therefore, getting the outcome required per the responsibility would have to be attained without

conflicting with another responsibility such as increasing the number of backers through the use

of prominent artists. As such, the ethical judgement generated as a deontologist is one of being

principle based. This implies that the duty to curry out obligation would require to be adhered to

first before attending to individual obligations.

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism can either be rule or act. Act utilitarianism is directed to whether the

individual’s action are right or wrong. Specifically, this depends on whether the person believes

that the consequences are bad or good. However, the individual under the law does so with the

intent of deciding what promotes the greatest good and needs to understand whether the act is

committed with malicious or harmful intensions. If not, then the discretion is upon the law

authorities to warn or arrest, thereby fulfilling greatest good. Regardless of personal feelings,

they are constrained in their choices by regulation, policy and law. Utilitarian ethical theories are

founded on people’s ability to predict the outcomes of their actions. Utilitarian believe that

choices that produced the greatest benefit to the most individuals are the one that are correct

ethically. John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianisms provide a logical and rational argument for a

decision that people can use in a case by case basis. Utilitarian can compare predicted results in a

certain situation which may help determine the best choice that is most beneficial for the most

individual.

Assessing the consequences, Palmer considered the act of bringing pleasure to her funs as

well as her individual welfare and she considered everything else irrelevant. When fans comment

about outstanding issues or confusion around her Kickstarter campaigns, Palmer responds

quickly to keep her fans informed. Palmer clearly stated how she intended to spend the money in
a public update and on her blog. Some fans saw this as an act of transparency but many outside

critics and musicians questioned her budget and accused her of spending inefficiently (Jefferson

2012). She insists that her budgeted costs of production were not inflated but rather reflected

what she had learned from previous campaigns. Palmer repeatedly shows her gratitude to her

funding audience. In the last hours of her campaign, Palmer and her band, The Grand Theft

Orchestra, recognized each Kickstarter backer individually in a live webcast by staging a block

party in New York where they wrote each backer's name on the pages of old phonebooks and

held each up to the camera. She continues to update her backers long after the campaign had

ended.

Egoism

Care Ethics

Virtue Ethics

The development of the virtue ethics in the 20th century followed an era in which

philosophical debate was dominated by utilitarian and deontological theory. Although there has

been a significant extend of development and cross pollination in the decades since, virtue ethics

was initially idealized as a way in innovative ethics that focused on moral characters rather than

an approach that focused on duties (deontology) or the one that focused on the consequences of

actions (utilitarianism). The supporters of the virtue ethics argue that the focus on normative

ethics in determining the correct principle of the right action is disastrously one sided. Virtue

ethics can be seen as an attempt to restore the balance: rather than beginning with a set of rules

or imperatives and classifying the ethical agent as one who complies with such rules, virtue

ethics begins with a discussion of the nature of the ethical agent and only then seeks to derive
principles of action. Indeed, even this is saying too much, as one of the distinctive characteristics

of virtue ethics (as opposed to deontology and utilitarianism) is that there is (typically) no sharp

act/actor division; to correctly interpret the act we must also interpret the actor, and vice versa.

This holistic view of ethical action, unifying individual psychology and action, offers a sharp

contrast with deontological and utilitarian approaches in which the actor often appears to be

nothing more than a cypher, an X in the ethical equation, lacking any characteristics other than

the capacity to comply or fail to comply with the rule in question.

While this commitment to taking the real, living individual into account is part of the

appeal of virtue ethics, it does open it up to class of critiques to which deontology and

utilitarianism are largely immune. Virtue ethics has rather a lot to say about human psychology;

in particular, it is committed to the claim that human beings have, or at the very least are able to

develop, certain character traits (on which more below). If it can be shown that humans do not

have and cannot develop such traits, then virtue ethics automatically fails. Normative ethics is

fundamentally a practical discipline, and if it is impossible to be as virtue ethics says one should

be, then it is hard to see what value it could have. The situationist critique is of precisely this

kind; it states that virtue ethics is founded on a false theory of human psychology. Situationism is

‘an error theory. It claims that people are systematically mistaken in attributing virtues’ (Alfano

2011, p. 123).