Is this a realistic demand? Perhaps not yet, but that’s the point. — Amazon gets what it wants by being so big and powerful that it can bring state governments to heel. No one company should have all that power.

To assess a film's odds of success (because even crowdfunders don’t want to back a loser), a prospective funder would want to know what people in the know—who are part of the “industry” in one way or another—make of it. This is the point often missed by those hailing Kickstarter as a revolutionary project that could emancipate the artists: What defines potential “success” for their film is still very much defined by the industry heavyweights.