The final project we have time to talk about during this drive is one of the newest and, we think, one of the most exciting. Our Vidding Roadmap. What's that? An economy pack of assorted awesome things -- initiatives that will serve a purpose beyond vidding, and which we believe will educate, advocate, and entertain. It includes a portal for learning about vidding, aimed at the curious, whether they are coming from inside fandom or from outside; a safe, stable place to store vids for the future; a way to share multimedia fanworks; and integration of multimedia into the Archive of Our Own.

The educational Vidding Community Resource Site is in development right now. The Dark Archive is also getting very close to reality. Video embed functionality for the AO3 is being coded and tested as we speak.

The Torrent of Our Own (TO3), however, is a more complex project. We are developing a bittorrent tracker for fair-use transformative fanworks, including fan vids, fic trailers, political remix, AMVs, machinima, and other forms of transformative digital media. This is a way to share our work with each other that isn't an afterthought to someone else's aims. A way that is designed for us, built by us, and owned by us. Running on our servers, with our advocacy behind it. After all, the vidding community has been increasingly disrupted by inaccurate content-filtering systems, the commercial failure of small streaming sites, bullying cease and desist letters, and wrongful DMCA takedowns. The TO3 will provide a stable, scalable home for vids; because torrents work best when there are high levels of collaboration and participation, we can open the network to any and all forms of fair use digital video and audio.

Our Vidding Roadmap, all of its parts, is a big project. It's one we believe there is a pressing need for. Preserving our work, advocating for its legitimacy, and building for the future.

Donate to the OTW now.

There are less than 48 hours left in our October Drive! Cool fact: so far, we have 228 donors from 17 countries! We're gratified by all you've done to help us to make this drive a success. If you haven't joined or donated yet, you can do so here, and get some cool stuff, too. But donating isn't the only way you can help: you can talk us up, introduce us to your friends, and spread the word about the OTW. You are our star recruiters, and your experience with everything the OTW can do for fans (and for the world!) is the most convincing testimony.

These fans have given us permission to link to the posts they've made promoting the drive and supporting the OTW. If you've posted something similar and would like to share, leave us a comment with a link!

rossetti: Fans and fanworks exist. And they exist in a long, literary, remixy creative tradition.
celli: go OTW!
devildoll: OTW Happenings
aethel: Fanlore and the Organization for Transformative Works
kate: News of the OTW
juniperphoenix: OTW membership drive and election
franzeska: Cons, Fandom Involvement, and Why You Should Join the OTW
velveteenrabbi: Supporting transformative works
alexandrakingsley: Fan culture and the transformation of everything
astolat: vid embedding and AO3! and OTW!
renay: Why should Final Fantasy fans care about OTW, anyway? (Because we're awesome.)
justira: This is fanwork; this is fan WORK; fandom is my fandom.
starlady: OTW drive! With a Matching Grant!
akamine-chan: the otw
Rebecca Tushnet: Organization for Transformative Works fundraising drive
sage: random bits and pieces
rivkat: In which I use many exclamation points
kass: The OTW, Which I Dig
erda: It's October
cesperanza: Weak for a Good Cause
zooey-glass: OMG OTW YEAY!
tanaqui: OTW October Donations Drive and First Contested Elections
minervacat: [yes, you!]
DarkEmeralds: Why I Contribute Cashy Money to the OTW
Natacha Guyot: Pourquoi je soutiens l’OTW | Why I support the OTW
lian: that org I volunteer for. you know.
watersword: i live in a hall of mirrors
Elizabeth Yalkut: October 2010: this is an awesome place
allison morris: i just want to stick them all under my ribcage.
juniperphoenix: Inspiring OTW supporters are inspiring

2010 has been a banner year for the OTW's Legal team, most notably for their role in securing a Digital Millenium Copyright Act exemption for noncommercial video remixers including vidders, anime music video makers, and makers of documentary films. Before this ruling, only film professors were given an exemption from the DMCA's prohibition against DVD ripping.

This expanded exemption is emblematic of the work of the OTW legal team and the OTW's commitment to legal advocacy for fans and fanworks by supporting fair use and communicating the message that fanworks are creative, transformative, and have cultural value. Your financial backing of the OTW supports these legal efforts and more. It makes the statement that fanworks and fan creativity matter.

Help us continue to provide a legal voice for fandom by supporting the OTW!

A number of bright and beautiful questions cropped up after we posted about the DMCA Exemption for Vidders. We've gathered up the handiest discussion, for clarification on what this ruling will mean for the community.

Our position: Fanvids are critical commentary

For the purpose of vidding, critical is a synonym for analytical, in the sense of constructing a "reading" of the source text. A shipper vid--one that celebrates the love between two characters, or creates a deeper relationship between them, or emphasizes the relationship between them, or sometimes even constructs it out of almost nothing--is a reading of the text that changes how you see it, or re-prioritizes the values of the original. Slash is almost always a critical reading, and implicitly a political one. Lots of vids are about emphasizing characters who aren't central, giving them their own screen time, making them the main character for three minutes. All of these are making critical commentary in the sense of making an analytical reading!

The Copyright Office did not rule that any particular vid was a fair use; however, it cited a number of vids as examples of the kinds of remix that are likely to constitute fair use.

The Exemption doesn't cover music

While the ruling isn't about music, it is still really important: it means that copyright holders can't use the DMCA to stop a fair use defense before it's out of the gate. Vis a vis YouTube and private companies, they will always be permitted to have their own rules: they can decide that they won't host vids that have a lot of green in them. But that doesn't make green vids illegal, and it doesn't make vids illegal either.

Are ripped clips legal?

Under the exemption, it does not violate the DMCA to rip clips from DVDs that you lawfully acquire for the purpose of making a noncommercial remix as long as you reasonably believe that you need to rip in order to get clips of the necessary quality. Once you have the clips, what you do with them, such as posting your vid online, is governed by fair use. If you're asking about services like YouTube, etc.: they are private companies who can make their own rules: they can decide not to host anything they don't want to host. We are hoping that this ruling will cause them to relax a bit about their own rules, but it's important to note that this is not the same thing as illegal.

What does this mean for copyright, fair use, and vids on YouTube?

Private companies like YouTube can take things down for whatever reasons they want, and they mostly claim to be complying with copyright, though sometimes it's that they literally don't want to bother to make the distinction between a fair use and just a pirated copy of something (likely to be less fair, though there are some arguments for straight copying as having some fair uses also). So most of the time, if you actually make a person see a vid, they agree that it's a fair use: YouTube takedowns are mostly done by computer, now, and computers can't tell the difference (or can't yet: the EFF has made some good suggestions for reprogramming computers so that they can tell the difference between a transformative work and a straight up clip).