What is Ballista?
Why use Ballista?
Who is Ballista?
Partners
What is Ballista?
Ballista is a community of netcitizens- writers,
artists, creators, academics, and businesses
who understand that their right to expression is under attack. We at
Ballista seek to give our users the necessary tools to continue to
express themselves fairly and freely. We arm users with resources to
help fight back against corporate interests seeking to over-propertize
culture.
Host your content
We at Ballista want to be your host for content; Ballista will give you plenty
of storage space to host your videos, audio, photos, and blog.
Connect to other users
As a Ballista user, you will be able to reach out and communicate with other
users via user comments, and votes.
Why use Ballista?
Throw something back at the man. With Ballista's fair use determination, our
users will have, while not legally binding nor scientific, an accumulated metric
sourced by readers and users whether a piece of media is copyright infringing
or not. Used as a legal tool, it can be used to fight back against the automated
systems used by media conglomerates to abuse the DMCA to silence content creators
who adhere to fair use.
Fair Use Hotlist and Fair Use Opinion Metrics
Our Fair Use Hotlist is a countdown of media that is has been accused of infringing
on copyright protections. As a host to our users content, we will attempt to
delay content takedown as long as we can legally (usually 24-26 hours). During
that time, accused content will be posted included in the hotlist, allowing the
Ballista community to weight in with their vote whether the content is infringing
or not.
DMCA Abuse Protection
Help empower the community by voting on whether content infringing on copyright
or being used fairly. Your participation will create a metric that says, "most
people think this media is being used fairly"… or otherwise. While not
legally binding nor scientific, it can be used as a legal tool to help to fight
back against media conglomerates using automated systems and abusing the DMCA
in their attempts to silence content creators. Content creators, armed with strong
fair use opinion statistics about their media can more easily mount a defense,
quite often making the accusation simply disappear entirely.
Perhaps even more importantly, accusers can be correlated with their accusations
over time, painting a clear picture of what parties are making justified claims
of copyright infringement, and what accusers are abusing the legal system.
Who is Ballista?
Ballista was founded by Andrew Zoleta, John Randall, Mike Bogan, Sonia Horan
and Uta Knablein, who met at NYU at a Digital Media Management II class with
Professor Igor Shoifot. (Co-Founder of Fotki.com)
You can reach us at: info@ballistaproject.com
Partners:
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Creative Commons
Chilling
Effects Clearinghouse
Wikimedia
Digital Natives
Digital Freedom
BoingBoing
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