thoughts on corporatizing (11/27/95):
the internet is poised to undergird human communication.I want to continue to be able to provide my content, free of charge, the the internet at large, without mediation, editation, cessitation, or intercession.
As Justin Hall has emerged as a strong voice on the Internet, so Justin Hall intends to continue to teach and share in an increasing corporate and profit minded environment.
I must discharge my responsibilities. And expand my power! Making money would allow me to pay the folks who have been so generously maintaining my pages (generous, but now with 25k readers a day, I have become an untoward expense). At the same time, making money would allow me to purchase servers to generously maintain other deserving not-for-profit pages.
I don't have to be a corporation to collect money.
People recommend I corporatize in order to reduce personal liability - if I stand tall on a business battlefield, someone might use the institutional tricks of business to screw me - lawsuits and the like.
How can a corporation write an autobiography?
If the corporation is just me, then why bother posing as an amorphous body? To avoid being squashed by business buggers? I don't want to play their game, isn't corporatizing stepping back into the ethereal? I make myself intangible because someone might fuck with me?
I am responsible for Links from the Underground. I generate the content, because LfromU is about honest personal communication. If you've got a problem with it, you've got a problem with me, let's work it out. If you dig it, want to support it, you'll be supporting me.
Can I corporatize in a business context without distancing myself in a personal publishing context?
I am talking about a shift from personal publishing to corporate publishing,
because I've become too popular - I can no longer sustain my personal effort and outreach at this pheonomenally wonderful rate, because I am weighing down other folks -
so I need to make money
- somehow making money involves being corporate (the connection isn't entirely clear to me, Howard recommended Nolo Press guide to small business startup.)
if the future is millions of authors and publishers each serving their stuff, do we want to be amorphous corporations protected from each other unaccountable, or do we want to be amongst individuals, that you can reach out and finger?
I feel as though it is my duty to take a stand against hiding behind the corporate/business shield, operating on a more personal level - I won't ask you to send checks to Links from the Underground, Inc., I'd ask you to pay me, Justin Hall. That's who generated the content you might appreciate, that's who'll be spending your dollar.
But all these people are telling me I might get screwed.
Isn't that already a risk? I might be putting myself on the line for personal accountability - nothing great happens unless people are willing to do so. If someone is hell bent on fucking you over, they'll find a way, layers of legal protection or no.
Either way, I gots to start makin' some cash, pronto. Cyborganic is having to shell out some serious shekels to support my bandwidth habit.
My Mom's accountant said the first thing I should do is set up a separate bank account, to avoid income/tax confusion. I'll have to determine that corporate or personal, so I'm not going to put this decision off for more than a
I need to do more research.
How do I maintain my integrity and ability to perform Links from the Underground in a commerce situation? (since my voice is bigger than my pipe)
Unless any of you have cousins in the T1 distribution business...
Feedback most welcome, discussion in UList,
Thanks for your bandwidth,
Justin