Media Mobilizing Project Collection Community Policy

This policy outlines the principles and processes that inform the People's Media Record's role as steward of the Media Mobilizing Project (MMP) Collection, in agreement with the interests and wishes of representatives of the MMP community. This document will be revised as needed in accordance with said interests and wishes.

If you were part of MMP or any organization documented in the collection and you disagree with any part of this policy or with the sharing of specific materials, please communicate with us at lila@peoplesmediarecord.com.

In the case of the sharing of specific materials, we will immediately stop sharing them upon receiving your communication and set up a meeting to discuss your concerns.

In 2017, a small team began to prepare MMP's media content for preservation, digitizing, and cataloging over 20,000 files of audiovisual media from MMP's unique history, from the organization's emergence in 2005 to its last productions in 2020. This collection, which we call the MMP Collection, consists of edited and unedited raw footage that depicts meetings, workshops, interviews with public figures and activists, and numerous political actions. There are also many files associated with the video and audio files, including files produced by video editing software, documents, transcriptions, spreadsheets, scripts, and even internal organizational documents. In total, the MMP collection includes more than 18,000 files. For more information on the MMP Collection, see this page.

As a result of this work, the People's Media Record (PMR) took form in 2022 as a community archive–under the fiscal sponsorship of Movement Alliance Project (MAP)–with the goal of developing as an archival and educational hub that builds power and capacity for Philadelphians to save and share their stories on their own terms. In 2023, PMR unveiled its digital archive, where users can find all the collection videos that MMP had released for public viewing and they can search through the metadata of more than 5000 items. In conversation with our Community Advisory Board, which includes former MMP staff, we also created a collection policy to provide guidance on how to balance the questions of access and privacy.

Understanding the importance of these questions for the MMP collection, PMR continued to examine them in 2023 and 2024 with the legal guidance of Creative Commons, an organization that specializes in digital access, copyright, and privacy issues. We have also had a series of meetings with two former MMP leaders, Beckah Phillips and Bryan Mercer to share our process and to further orient ourselves about potential privacy concerns. We reached an agreement with Beckah and Bryan to create an official policy document to be shared with the MMP community for feedback and revision. This document, which we call the MMP community policy, shapes PMR's approach to sharing MMP collection materials with the public.

Centering the preferences of the communities that have participated in the creation of the materials in the MMP collection is an essential part of our approach to sharing (or not sharing) those materials.

PMR recognizes that archives, especially when held up as authoritative historical records, are an important part of how historical narratives are created. Furthermore, we believe that telling the stories of our social movements, especially from within the most impacted communities, strengthens our continuing movements and communities. Who gets to tell those stories and how they get told have a lasting impact on how we grow as people and how our communities and movements grow.

But we also understand, as members of the community, that media content can be used against us just as easily as it can be used to strengthen and unify our networks. In considering how to provide access to the MMP collection, we will prioritize the needs and interests of the people who created the MMP collection and were documented in these materials.

We are committed to protecting the privacy and confidentiality of all the individuals, groups, and organizations whose lives and activities are documented in these materials.

With that purpose in mind, we have developed a model to determine what kind of access is provided to users based on the nature of the individual items or collections and on archiving best practices. According to this model, materials are identified according to four levels of access: open, restricted, private, and community.

Open is for materials that document public actions and events and were created by MMP for the general public. Restricted is for materials that document private individuals or events or that record internal aspects of the organization. Private is for materials with highly sensitive information or copyright issues. Community is limited to people or organizations who are documented in MMP materials or participated in their creation. Below, we have an outlined detailed description of these content access levels.

In advancing our dual goal of encouraging the use of our collection and safeguarding our communities from the risks of unlimited access, we are committed to ensuring the cataloging information created by MMP/PMR staff and volunteers is made as broadly available as possible while making sure that personal or sensitive data, such as videographer names, are not publicly released.

Open access is set for materials that were created by MMP for public consumption and shared publicly on sites such as YouTube and Vimeo. These materials document any action or event that is open to the general public on private or public property, including protests, speeches, civil disobedience, and lectures. For instance, this video is identified as open access because it shows a local public official, former Mayor Michael Nutter, performing a public action, the announcement of the new city budget, in City Hall.

There also might be cases where private individuals have requested open access for recordings which they created or where they appear.

Open access materials and their metadata are made fully available to all users through the PMR website. Open access excludes the downloading of files.

Restricted access is used for materials created by MMP that document private individuals or events, internal organizational meetings, or interviews created for organizing or relationship building. Metadata for restricted materials is available on the website (with the exception of fields that violate individual privacy). Although many of these materials capture public events to some degree, they may also include private individuals who may not have consented to be showcased openly for general consumption.

For instance, this item, which shows footage of taxi drivers striking against the installation of GPS in their cabs, documents an interview with a cab driver who did not necessarily consent to inclusion into a public archive.

Access to the materials is subject to affirmative consent by the documented communities. In the case that we are unable to get a response from documented communities, access is based on the discretion of PMR staff and advisors, considering the risks involved in sharing the materials and the purpose for accessing them.

Researchers and organizers may request access to materials identified as restricted access, which will be granted on a case-by-case basis. Restricted access is limited to a period of seven days; users may be granted renewals of restricted access depending on the circumstances and the amount of material they need to access.

Private access is set for materials that contain highly sensitive information or are otherwise inappropriate for sharing publicly. For example, the MMP collection includes documentation of the Tavis Smiley Show when it was recorded in Philadelphia. Aside from phone numbers, social security numbers, and home addresses, highly sensitive information may include full names, political affiliations or opinions, trade union membership, sexual orientation, immigration status, and other politically vulnerable indicators. Privacy is determined in dialogue with PMR advisors and the individuals that appear in the materials.

Metadata for these materials is not made available on the website and the materials are reserved for access by PMR staff and original contributors.

Community access is set for all community members who contributed to the creation of specific content: this can include videographers, editors, and individuals or organizations who were documented in MMP materials. Community members are granted full access to all the materials in which they were involved, and they should also be able to download them for their personal or organizational collections.

All former MMP members have full access to the MMP collection in its totality. Use of materials under community access is limited to noncommercial educational and learning purposes (for our approach to fair use, see below).

According to U.S. copyright law, the copyright owners of all MMP collection materials are the creators or authors of the media. Unless they signed release forms, interviewees may also hold copyright over their recorded words. In the case of recorded performances, the artist(s) also own the rights to their performance.

We would like to hear from any copyright owners who are not properly identified in this collection so we can make the necessary corrections. If any material here is found to violate copyright law, PMR will notify the contributor and take down the material immediately.

In providing access to materials whose copyright we do not own, PMR believes in the practice of fair use: we strictly share these materials with noncommercial educational and research purposes in mind and with the goal of generating learning and critical discussion. We follow the same approach in activating materials through physical and digital exhibits or presentations. The only exception to this approach is when a licensing agreement explicitly enables the use of such materials for other purposes.

In building this collection policy, PMR looked at a wide range of references and archives. In particular, we were inspired by the policies of the Digital Transgender Archive, African Activist Archives, Open Up! LGBT History Out of the Closet, and May Day Rooms Archive. We were also assisted by the book Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for Digitization for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums, by Peter B. Hirtle, Emily Hudson, and Andrew T. Kenyon, the Society of American Archives' Code of Ethics, the standardized rights statements created by the rightsstatements.org consortium, Shlomit Yanisky-Ravid and Ben Zion Lahav's article “Public Interest vs. Private Lives: Affording Public Figures Privacy in the Digital Era,” and Victoria Anne Royal's M.A. thesis “If I am Not for Myself, Who is for Me?” An Examination of Legal and Ethical Considerations Concerning LGBTQ+ Populations and Collections in Museums.” Last but not least, we have greatly benefited from the insights of the PMR Community Advisory Board.

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/