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About |
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OpenArchive is dedicated to protecting media freedom by helping eyewitnesses preserve truth to power. We’ve created a distributed media archiving ecosystem that enables human rights defenders to share, archive, verify, and encrypt their evidentiary media.
To create a more just, equitable, and sustainable media ecosystem where people’s history is the primary history.
People armed with smartphones are history’s first responders, amassing rich, contextualized records of injustice and fostering unprecedented demand for change.
Our phones are replaceable, but the moments we capture on them are not. And yet, many activists, journalists and eyewitnesses are storing precious pieces of history on the most fragile devices they own. The media itself is also ephemeral, as new threats to digital media arise.
Save by OpenArchive is a free, open source mobile archiving application for documentarians and human rights defenders that securely sends mobile media to the Internet Archive, other online destinations using Orbot/Tor. By uniting the work of the Guardian Project, Creative Commons, and distributed, secure servers, it offers at-risk groups more agency over their historical record by affording them secure transit, media authentication, pseudonymity, licensing controls, and the ability to choose where and how the media will be stored for long-term access and reuse. In addition to this, those with limited internet access, can share media between devices with our “nearby” feature via bluetooth, so there can be multiple copies of the media across devices.
It is currently available for iOS on iTunes. Watch for our new android app, coming soon! Our lightweight mobile app. addresses the gaps in the current online ecosystem existing around the a) ethical short-term collection and b) long term preservation of sensitive mobile media. We provide mobile-centered, scalable, industry-standard, ethical, intuitive, easy to use tools for at-risk communities to pseudonymously preserve and authenticate their media so that it will be accessible and maintain its provenance in the future.
Filecoin Foundation For the Distributed Web currently supports our expansion, community partnerships, and decentralization of our work.
The Open Technology Fund, supported the expansion, infrastructure, and decentralization of OpenArchive.
The Knight Prototype Fund supported the first iteration of our mobile application.
We are currently seeking funding to help us sustain OpenArchive, develop new and refine current features, and to sustain our grassroots research efforts.
If you would like to support us, you can make a tax-deductible donation or contact us directly here. We'd love to hear from you.
Homepage photo by: Mathana Stender