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.