Wikipedia defines vidding as "the fan labor practice in media fandom of creating music videos from the footage of one or more visual media sources, thereby exploring the source itself in a new way. The creator may explore a single character, support a particular romantic pairing between characters, criticize or celebrate the original text, or point out an aspect of the TV show or film that they find under-appreciated. The creators refer to themselves as "vidders", their product as "vids", "fanvids", or "songvids", and the act itself as “vidding."

Professor Maggi Savin-Baden explains that  "Vidding is where content is refashioned or recreated in order to present a different perspective, usually based on music videos and television programmes. The purpose of vidding is to critique, re-present and explore an aspect of the original media."

Professor Francesca Coppa points out that “Vidding is a thirty-year-old remix practice in which predominantly female media fans re-edit television or film into music videos. Vidding is important not only as an art form in its own right but also as a subcultural — and often feminist — reinterpretation of and confrontation with mainstream media culture.”

Vidder Morgan Dawn writes that “ Vidding is communal poetry. It weaves together familiar images and beloved characters with music to create an intimate emotional journey. Fanvids bypass our higher cognitive functions and aim straight for our limbic center: where we laugh, where we sing and where we cry. “

Fan vids have increasingly been included in gallery and museum exhibitions, and there is a growing literature about the phenomena including works like”Women’s Work” and “US”.    However these works still have a relative ephemerality, preserved either on decaying VHS video tapes or increasingly obsolete handmade DVDs, and subject to takedowns across the Internet.  This collection attempts to preserve for posterity fanvids in various significant categories, including by noted vidding collectives like The Media Cannibals as well as vids cited in remix advocacy before the Library of Congress by the Organization For Transformative Works (OTW) in their Test Suite of Fair Use Vids.  It also includes fan vid favorites of the curators, along with vids submitted by various vidders.  The curators will be seeking to add other vids of some demonstrated notability to the collection over time. All vids have either been uploaded by the vidders or with their permission.

FAQ:

Who are the curators?

Francecsa Coppa, Professor of English and Film Studies at Muhlenberg College, and Morgan Dawn, a vidder with over 20 years experience

How can I get my fan vids included?

Contact us via vidding.fanvid.ia@gmail.com. If your vid is selected for inclusion in the collection, we can upload the vids for you and add it directly to our collection. Alternatively,  you can create a free account on the Internet Archive, upload your own vid and then send an email directly to the Internet Archive requesting that the vid be moved to our collection. They can be reached at collections-service@archive.org

How can I use the fanvids? 

See the RIGHTs section below

RIGHTS

These fan vids are transformative fanworks.They fall under the fair use exception to US copyright laws, as only small snippets of video images are used creatively and no profit is made.   (Wikipedia, Fair Use)

The majority of the fanvids are offered under Creative Commons licenses.  However, some vidders may have selected license variations so be sure to check the license fields. 

Every three years the Library of Congress grants groups and individuals an exemption to the United States laws that make it a felony to decrypt copyrighted material (such as a DVD protected by CSS encryption). In 2009, the EFF proposed an exemption for noncommercial remix, and the OTW supported this exemption on behalf of vidders. The OTW successfully argued that access to high quality vidding source, which could only be obtained by decrypting DVDs, was essential to allowing vidders to create meaningful commentary and critique about TV, movies and popular culture. The OTW also argued that noncommercial works that make creative use of existing copyrighted material, such as fanvids, are transformative, and that transformative works are legitimate under US copyright law. (Fanlore, Fair Use)