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Comment by dean_mcpherson | Hacker News Reader

Hey femto, I'm Dean McPherson (@dean_mcpherson), the dev making Curbit. Our current plan is exactly that, if the user is posting their own stuff, we ask them to place it in a legal, accessible location. This is accomplished by asking them for special pickup instructions (e.g. "On the porch", or "On top of the mailbox").

The other big use case though is reporting stuff that others have dumped. Using the app makes no statement that you put the stuff there, and we in no way are trying to encourage people to break the law :)

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Thanks for the response Dean. One also needs to be careful if picking stuff up without the owner's permission, as it is technically theft. Granted that prosecution is unlikely.

Maybe councils would be prepared to pay for the "reporting stuff that others have dumped" aspect? If not, they might pay for a "report stuff that needs our attention" aspect: using Curbit's infrastructure to provide a stream of pictures of pot holes, broken signs, etc. with attached time/GPS coordinates?

IIRC, in America items placed near bins, used for regular refuse pick up fit into the legal category of "abandoned" property, and are thus pretty much fair game...or are treated as such for all practical purposes...

Where I live that seems to be the case...no one cares...

That is, unless local (city) codes legislate differently...

Creating services for local government to use is definitely an avenue of monetisation we will investigate later down the track if the app gains traction.

Obviously however, user privacy and encouraging the core use of the app is the primary concern, and we won't pursue any method of monetisation that will jeopardise that.

I'd use something like Curbit if it matched my stuff with charities that want it.

I believe (on faith) that local charities make better use of my stuff. My "go to" charity is the local services for the blind, because an ex-gf works for eye surgeons.

Though it'd be more convenient, I'm loathe to give to Goodwill (greedy execs, bad labor relations), Salvation Army (homophobes, jesus freaks), Red Cross (misrepresenting how donations are used).

I'm cool with Habitat for Humanity.

[I live in the USA.]

We have something like this in San Francisco for furniture mostly: http://www.communitythriftsf.org

They pick up your stuff, you choose a charity, they sell the item to someone else and the proceeds go to the charity. As it turns out, most charities want cash not my old bookshelves but (the confusingly named) Community Thrift Store sorts it all out.

That's a cool idea. A lot of charities in Aus will come and pick up stuff that's valuable if you organise it.

With Curbit we're really trying to create infrastructure for one way gifting that takes the weight of organisational weight off the donor. There is nothing stopping charities from picking up items listed on Curbit though.

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