[calbear81]

Arts and Culture are part of their founding DNA and you can see how hard they are trying to retain the spirit of Kickstarter to fund projects that may not have clear commercial value by giving more face time to these projects.

When Kickstarter put in place restrictions on pre-sales and other types of projects (http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-is-not-a-store), they were primarily addressing the hardware/tech category that changed the core nature of what Kickstarter was meant for.

[avalaunch]

Usually with a platform you want to go with the flow. If the users use it in an unexpected manner - you learn from that and optimize for it. Instead they're fighting their users. It's admirable that they're sticking with their mission but it definitely leaves the door open for someone to leapfrog them.