Privately raising cash to bring ideas and projects to fruition can be a daunting task. Convincing potential investors is rarely easy, with many demanding a large piece of the final pie in return.

To help solve this problem, in 2009 US-based Kickstarter was born, a site that has developed into a global crowdfunding platform where anyone can throw a few dollars at projects they believe could enjoy future success.

According to current stats, the site has received pledges exceeding four billion dollars from more than 15.5 million backers, which have funded more than 155,000 individual projects. One of those is campaign formerly known as The Monster Book of Monsters Film Project.

“THE MONSTER BOOK OF MONSTERS is a collection of 100 stories from around the world, inspired by the legendary book from the Harry Potter universe,” the Kickstarter read until recently.

“These aren’t your everyday Werewolves and Wendigos either. Each story is told by the survivor of an encounter with a unique and mysterious creature more wild and varied than you can imagine. From the twisted minds of 70 authors including Amazon Best Sellers: Tobias Wade, Blair Daniels, Tara Devlin, and P.F. McGrail. As well as numerous Reddit NoSleep award winners.”

The initial campaign

The idea of the campaign is to raise funds that will go towards a ‘sizzle reel’, a short video highlighting a vision and tone for a proposed movie or TV show.

“This reel will be pitched to large production companies in an effort to launch a horror inspired anthology TV series. The more money raised- the better the reel!” the Kickstarter reads.

The campaign had a modest target of just $3,997 dollars, which was easily reached a few days ago and well in advance of the January 1, 2019 deadline. However, the project appears to have landed on the radar of Warner Bros. who expressed displeasure at the Harry Potter references in the fundraiser.

In a takedown notice sent to Kickstarter, the movie company alleged copyright infringement by the campaign due to its use of a book title featured in the movie Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Citing itself as the owner of “The Harry Potter series of books and motion pictures, and all elements contained therein. Including, but not limited to, the ‘Monster Book of Monsters’,” Warner demanded action from the crowd-funding platform.

“This project identifies itself as ‘inspired by the legendary book from the Harry Potter universe’ and uses the original title created by Ms. Rowling,” Warner complained.

While it’s unclear whether Kickstarter temporarily took the campaign down, the complaint from Warner certainly prompted the team behind it into action. References to all things Harry Potter have now been removed, as the image below shows.

More Warner-friendly now…

Additionally, the text proclaiming that “THE MONSTER BOOK OF MONSTERS is a collection of 100 stories from around the world, inspired by the legendary book from the Harry Potter universe” has now been transformed into a more basic “collection of 100 horror stories from around the world.”

Finally, the campaign has also amended its end goal statement. That was originally to have a “‘NoSleep’ inspired TV show”, a reference to Reddit’s NoSleep sub where people share their own scary stories. The edited aim is to have a straightforward “horror TV show”, although references to Reddit elsewhere in the campaign remain.

Warner Bros. are notoriously protective over their lucrative Harry Potter interests. Earlier this year the company’s lawyers told an annual Harry Potter festival held in Denmark that it could no longer use names and images related to the Harry Potter movies.

In 2009, Warner Bros. took action against a London-based single-mother after she dared to organize a Harry Potter-themed Halloween dinner. It’s unclear whether the sarcastically rebranded “Generic Wizard” night managed to sell out as planned.

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In many developed countries, rightsholders are in dispute with search engines over the appearance of pirated content in search results and other indexes.

Back in August, TV companies under the Gazprom-Media umbrella filed complaints at the Moscow City Court, demanding that Yandex remove links to infringing content. Yandex initially refused to comply but under threat of ISP blocking, eventually took preventative action.

In September, the TV channels filed another four lawsuits against Yandex. The companies asked the Court to order the search provider to “stop creating technical conditions that ensure the placement of [infringing] works on the Yandex.ru website.”

At the time, it was reported that the underlying aim of Gazprom Media was to reach a settlement agreement with Yandex, which would see the search company take action against infringing content. That aim, it seems, is well on the way to being achieved.

The press service of Gazprom reports that settlement agreements have been reached in four lawsuits, two featuring TV3 and Super TV and another two featuring TNT and 2×2.

The settlements are directly linked to the landmark Memorandum of Cooperation signed by Russia’s most powerful tech companies and several major media companies early November.

The agreement will see the formation of a central database of infringing sites which will provide information on what content tech companies should remove from their indexes. The database will be queried every few minutes, with search platforms removing infringing links visible in Russia within six hours.

Commenting on the settlements, Gazprom Media said that the cooperation agreement signed last month represents another important step towards “the development of civilized content consumption.”

Reports circulating mid-November indicated that Yandex had already started to comply with the memorandum’s terms by deleting links to infringing content.

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This September, the European Parliament backed the controversial Article 13 proposals, something that was met with a chorus of support from the entertainment industries, the music sector in particular.

The final text of Article 13 is yet to be finalized so the EU Parliament will need to vote again, once that’s completed. However, as Article 13 mutates to address the concerns of opponents, rightsholders have been expressing concern that the changes will actually strengthen the position of major online content sharing service providers (OCSSPs) such as YouTube.

Last week, major rightsholders including the MPA and the Premier League warned that as it stands, Article 13 will create a new safe harbor for services that take measures to prevent infringement. Now, even more dissenting voices are making their opinions known.

In an open letter to the European Commission, Parliament and Council, more rightsholders and content groups including IFPI – a previously staunch supporter of Article 13 – say the proposals are going in the wrong direction.

“We have reviewed the European Commission text/non-papers on article 13 and we have serious concerns about the direction of travel,” the groups write.

“As we reach the very final stages of this process, and negotiators seek to finalize a compromise text, we urge you to remember that the overall aim of the original European Commission proposal was to correct the distortion of the digital market place caused by User Upload Content (UUC) services, which enable users to upload content onto their sites and then profit from the availability of creative content without returning fair revenues to rightsholders, who create and invest in such content.”

The groups say that the solution to the so-called ‘Value Gap’ lies in holding OCSSPs liable for communication to the public when copyrighted works are made available from their platforms while excluding them from the safe harbors available in Article 14 of the E-Commerce Directive.

“We continue to believe that only a solution that stays within these principles meaningfully addresses the Value Gap/Transfer of Value. Moreover, licensing needs to be encouraged where the rightsholders are willing to do so but at the same time not be forced upon rightsholders,” the groups write, noting that proposals that deviate from the above “should be dismissed.”

As things stand, the current proposal text put forward by the European Commission would need “fundamental changes to achieve the Directive’s aim to correct the Value Gap/ Transfer of Value”, the groups note.

Underlining the predicament the entertainment industries now find themselves in, the letter warns that the liability exceptions currently on the table could leave rightsholders in a worse position than they’re in today.

“Any ‘mitigation measures’, should they be offered to OCSSPs, must therefore be clearly formulated and conditional on OCSSPs taking robust action to ensure the unavailability of works or other subject matter on their services,” the groups add.

“To that end, while it may be appropriate for rightsholders or their representatives to give services access to reasonably necessary identifying information concerning unauthorised works or other subject matter, unclear or open-ended provisions potentially obliging rightsholders to play the main role in preventing unauthorized uses of their works fail to provide the necessary legal certainty and therefore fail to provide a meaningful solution to the Value Gap/ Transfer of Value.”

The full letter is available here (pdf)

Update: Julia Reda MEP reports that the trilogue negotiations closed Thursday with no overall agreement but it “still seems like most negotiators want an #Article13 that requires #UploadFilters.”

The next trilogue is planned for third week of January, Reda adds. More information here.

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Under President Trump, the United States has worked hard to put several new trade deals in place.

The administration is also working on a new trade agreement with the EU for which the US Trade Representative recently asked the public for input.

This week the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), which includes Amazon, Cloudflare, Facebook, and Google as members, sent in its thoughts.

The submission includes a stark warning against the EU’s proposed copyright reform plans, including Article 13, which could open the door to upload filtering.

It’s no secret that the proposal is a topic of intense debate within the EU. The tech companies, however, warn the US Government that its effects may hurt the US economy as well.

The CCIA cautions that the proposed changes could increase liability for large Internet services by weakening the safe harbor protections provided by current EU law. At the same time, it will be at odds with the DMCA’s safe harbor provisions.

“The proposed Copyright Directive disrupts settled law protecting intermediaries by weakening established protections from U.S. Internet services in the 2000 EU E-Commerce Directive, and by imposing an unworkable filtering mandate on hosting providers that would require automated ‘notice-and-stay-down’ for a wide variety of copyrighted works.

“If adopted, the Directive would dramatically weaken these long-standing liability protections, which suggests that most modern service providers may be ineligible for its protections,” the CCIA says.

The tech companies note that EU officials have identified US companies as the intended targets of these proposals. They fear that the plans will result in implicit upload filter requirements.

“Under Article 13 of the proposal, the Directive now implies that online services must procure or develop and implement content recognition technology. The decision to compel affirmative filtering of all Internet content, including audiovisual works, images, and text, based on that content’s copyright status, is alarming and profoundly misguided.”

According to the latest proposals, Article 13 would not impose a general monitoring requirement. However, it may require Internet services to ensure that infringing content is not reuploaded, which is hard to achieve without automated filters.

The CCIA points out the lack of specifics as another concern. It’s not clear what measures hosting providers and other services will have to implement in order to be safe, they argue.

This uncertainty and the incompatibility with US law is troublesome for the tech companies. They hope that the US Government will keep these concerns in mind while negotiating a new trade deal.

The final text of Article 13 is still being drafted. The latest trilogue meeting will take place later this week. The CCIA cautions the US to keep these developments in mind, noting that they have the potential to harm the US economy.

“The text is currently under negotiation in trilogue. If the final EU reform does include these provisions, there would likely be a corresponding increase in risk for U.S. platforms doing business in the EU, resulting in significant economic consequences for the U.S. digital economy, which depends on the EU market.

“Furthermore, there is likely to be a ripple effect on the rest of the world, given the EU’s international influence,” the CCIA submission adds.

This is only one side of the argument, of course. The RIAA also submitted comments to the US Trade Representative, presenting a different picture.

While the music group doesn’t mention Article 13, it does caution against “overbroad provisions on copyright safe harbors” and the “lack of online platform accountability,” two issues the EU’s copyright reforms aim to address.

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A copy of the CCIA submission is available here (pdf), and the RIAA’s submission can be found here (pdf).

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Last year, Russian introduced new legislation that can see search engines fined for offering links to VPNs and other anonymizers that have been banned in the country. Fines can also be issued to search engines that fail to connect to a resource offering up-to-date information on what domains should be rendered inaccessible.

This database (known as FGIS), should have been utilized by Google, but for reasons that remain unclear, the US-based search giant didn’t want to play ball.

Several weeks ago, local telecoms watchdog Roscomnadzor contacted Google with a demand that it should immediately connect to the FGIS blacklist. Google still did not comply, placing the company in breach of federal law.

That left Google exposed to a potential administrative fine of between 500,000 and 700,000 rubles (US$7,545 to US$10,563). A further demand insisted that it should connect to the FGIS database by today.

Despite a meeting between Deputy Head of Roscomnadzor Vadim Subbotin and Doron Avni, Google’s Director of Public Policy & Government Relations for Europe, Middle East & Africa Emerging Markets, which took place in Moscow last month, today’s deadline wasn’t met.

Roscomnadzor announced this morning that as a result of the continued breach, it had considered the merits of an administrative violation against Google. Since the company had not responded as required, despite having the rules “repeatedly explained”, a fine had been imposed.

“Failure to comply with these requirements constitutes an administrative offense (Part 1 of Article 13.40 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation). The sanction of this article provides for a legal fine in the amount of from 500 to 700 thousand rubles,” a Roscomnadzor statement reads.

While fines are never welcome, the watchdog fined Google just 500,000 rubles (US$7,545). This is the lowest amount that can be handed down under existing laws.

While the dispute was ongoing, Google said that it was in constant contact with Roscomnadzor and was ready for discussion and negotiation, including action to ensure it complies with Russian legal requirements moving forward. Why connecting to Russia’s FGIS database didn’t happen as required remains unclear.

Early November, major rightsholders and tech companies in Russia signed a memorandum of cooperation to deal with the issue of online piracy. Google was not a signatory although there are some suggestions that it could join at some point in the future.

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