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SoylentNews is people

posted by LaminatorX on Wednesday March 12 2014, @10:55AM   Printer-friendly
from the ontology dept.

prospectacle writes:

"An important choice remains for this site. What kind of organisation will we be, practically, legally and financially?

A for-profit, shareholder corporation seems out of the question, by general consensus (correct me if I'm wrong), but other questions remain. The basic choice is this:

Will we be like a charity, a co-op, or a recreational club?

  1. (Like a) Charity:
    Being like a charity means operating for the public benefit. What we produce is news and englightened commentary for the benefit of the world. All our finances and operations would be geared towards this aim. All excess revenue is reinvested into the site.
  2. Co-op:
    A co-op is for the mutual financial benefit of individual (possibly paid) members. Three main sub-options for this exist that might be appropriate for this site:
    2a) A retailer's co-op. Members use a common organisation in order to make individual profits. For example if members used this site to display their stunning intelligence, and then put their resume or website links on their profile page so people could hire them. Maybe there are services built into the site to find someone to hire who fits your requirements.
    2b) A worker's co-operative: Employees share any excess revenue. Some revenue would go to expenses, some would be reinvested, whatever remains is shared among employees.
    2c) A buyer's co-op. We exist to get discounts, or to buy together what we can't afford separately. Maybe we're buying well-written news and analysis from professional authors. Or maybe we're bulk-buying electronics, etc, so the price-per individual can be lower.
  3. A Recreational Club:
    This takes membership fees to provide access to equipment, organize competitions, etc. Maybe paid members would get to use extra services, like an email account, or storage space, or their own discussion thread area, or software project hosting, or chat-rooms, etc. Non-members could still be permitted, with fewer privileges, and would have to pay-per-use for the extra services (or pay to become a member).

This is a gross simplification, but gives some idea of the options involved. Feel free to offer alternatives. So what should we be, what is our purpose, really? And what kind of a structure is required to make sure we serve that purpose, and that money doesn't end up in the wrong pockets?

Bonus question: which jurisdiction should we set ourselves up in to fulfil our mission most effectively?"

 
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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by bradley13 on Wednesday March 12 2014, @03:14PM

    by bradley13 (3053) on Wednesday March 12 2014, @03:14PM (#15311) Homepage Journal

    To some extent, deciding on the jurisdiction may have a huge impact on the form. Just as an example, here in Switzerland you would have the possibility to become a "Verein", which is a very official form of club. You must have bylaws, finances, and so forth. However, you are not subject to the type of regulations (and, usually, taxes) applied to corporations. As a "club", you have to have meetings, the people running the show must be elected in annual meetings, and so forth.

    It seems to me that this kind of organization could make a lot of sense - it is automatically community based, you are not prohibited from selling things (clubs have to finance themselves), etc, etc...

    However, you also need to base the organisation where at least some of the staff and a portion of the community is located. Whatever form and whatever jurisdiction, there will be legal requirements to fulfill, and some of those involve a warm body showing up at a government office.

    Someone asked "why not the US". The answer from my perspective is "because the US has joined the dark side". With an arrogant government that thinks it can apply US laws anywhere in the world, with the NSA, with the IRS - the US is no longer the good guy. Any gesture to reduce the dominance of the US over the Internet, is a gesture worth making.

    --
    Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
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