To try to get around any of the legal issues, could you not just get your local paper to write something up about WCG and get them to give the URL to download the agent.

This would save money in people shipping stuff to you and in you running it.

Great idea BTW.

I happen to be an attorney located in the State of Texas, U.S.A. I see no legal problem in running an ad asking for donations of used computers. Since these computers will be donated by their owners to you you will have legal ownership of them thus will naturally have permission to run the Grid software on them. The only problem would be since you are not set up as a tax deductable charity (I am assuming this) the people donating the computers cannot treat their donation as a tax deductable donation. You should make this clear to those individuals who donate their equipment to you. Perhaps you could coordinate your project through a charity or school so as to allow equipment donors to get a tax deduction, but you need to check with them to see what the exact rules and requirements are.

Just to be on the extra safe side when you take possession of the donated computers get a receipt from the donor containing the donor's name and address, date of transfer and detailed description of the specific donated equipment, such as serial numbers or technical specifications. Keep all of this in a file and a copy of the file in a seperate location for safekeeping.

Some other thoughts: Make sure your electrical wiring meets legal building code requirements for the amount of power your computers are going to consume. You do not want to cause an electrical fire due to overloaded circuits. Also, I have read of cases where a residence consumed an inordinate amount of power which drew the attention of the police. They thought the excessive power use was the result of the use of indoor plant lights to grow pot.

Yes, you can set your self up as a charity, see

http://www.irs.gov/charities/charitable/article/0,,id=96099,00.html

The issues associated with this avenue is the cost to you in setting up the non-profit origanization and administrative duties. If you do this you can deduct all of your person expenses from your personal income tax plus a percentage of the cost of your homeowner expenses based porportionally on the space your basement occupies. As for protection from personal libility, incorporating does give protection to your personal assets if your processing activities causes harm to others. Also, all persons donating computer equipment to you can deduct the value of the equipment donated. I am not sure of the value that the IRS allows donors to deduct for their equipment, it depends in part on the bookkeeping the donor used in valuation. I initially just thought you wanted your processing activities to be a very small opperation but if you are more serious about it this is the avenue to follow.