Absolutely agreed. This is complete nonsense. Since people can already "commit" BTC to this cause, they have already implemented a Bitcoin payment solution. This blows up the entire premise. I don't recall all of the details of App.Net's launch, but I do remember lots of similar, desperate PR tactics aimed at convincing people to contribute money to it back then.

There are some entirely new business models that Bitcoin enables, and IMO those may deserve some attention. This, however, is far from one of those cases.