How does it work?

OpenDDB is an on-demand catalogue of multimedia content (documentaries, movies, books, music, experimental cinema and journalistic inquiries), run by an Editorial Staff that:
  • Promotes a growing number of young, emerging and independent productions, mostly funded through crowdfunding campaigns and distributed under Creative Commons licenses.
  • Creates a context where users and authors can meet and share ideas, to spread content and information and to promote collective debates
  • Builds a network between independent productions both in Italy and abroad.
  • Supports self-productions, experimenting new ways of funding based on new economic relationships and gift culture.
  • Promotes meetings between authors and users, to spread the projects in our catalogue (through public screenings, pitches, festivals).
The Editorial Staff has the following tasks:
  • To choose and admit new works inside the catalogue.
  • To distribute multimedia content, paying an economic consideration to the author of that content.
  • To promote the catalogue and its content, according to a discretionary strategy.
Thanks to the efficient search engine of our website, which searches by title and by themes and keywords, you will be able to reach all the content in our catalogue. Each title has detailed information: synopsis, trailer, author’s biography and technical specifications. You can check the availability of the digital download file and of the related subtitles before making a donation. You can donate through the “Paypal” button on the page of each project. Once you made your donation, the site will initiate the procedure to deliver to you the digital file, depending on your choice. At this moment, it is not available the streaming service.
The relationship between the user and OpenDDB is not the same of the traditional e-commerce websites. One of the purposes of the project is to promote a new and virtuous relationship between user and author, through the mechanism of donation. We ask you to donate to have access to a creative work. The donation is free, but we strongly recommend you to respect the amount indicated in each page. However, the decision is up to you. We think it is appropriate to tell you that, if you respect these guidelines, you will allow OpenDDB to be self-sustainable and, at the same time, you will also respect the author’s work.
Each donation will be distributed every 6 months according to the following partition:
- 50% to the author
- 30% to pay the costs of logistics (delivery, billing, Paypal withholding)
- 20% to OpenDDB
This partition allows the growth and the self-sustainability of the distribution project and allows to support the work of the author, as well.
The distribution of the creative works in the catalogue is up to the Editorial Staff, for what concerns both the digital file and the hard copy. On each page, you will be able to see if the project is available and in what format. Please, pay attention to the availability section before requiring anything and donating.
The admission follows the author’s request, through a private agreement, after the Editorial Staff has approved the multimedia content, evaluating it on the basis of a precise policy.
  • The project will be evaluated on the basis of its social, cultural, environmental, political and ethical interest;
  • The projects are automatically rejected if, according to the Editorial Staff, are somehow disrespectful, fascist, racist, sexist or homophobic;
  • The theme and the territorial scope in question do not represent preferential criteria. The Editorial Staff reserves the right to rearrange the content of the catalogue according to discretional criteria, with the purpose of promoting content that concerns topical and urgent issues. The Editorial Staff reserves the right to group projects of different authors to create thematic collections, too;
  • The content has to be released entirely under a Creative Commons license. Content under other licenses or copyright rules will be rejected;
  • The Editorial Staff favours projects produced for the big part through crowdfunding campaigns, like the ones featured on the website. This criterion is not required, but, according to the disposition of the website, projects that agree with the line adopted will be favoured.
Lastly, the Editorial Staff takes responsibility to freely decide whether a project is admitted or not, accordingly to the previously described filters.
OpenDDB does not ask for exclusive distribution rights. The author can feel free to distribute his creative work as he wishes. The website is supposed to be an instrument to support independent productions. It will be both Editorial Staff’s and author’s interest to find possible coordination about anyone’s distribution mechanisms.
The author will have to sign a document that testifies:
  • The authorship of the creative work;
  • That he has all the necessary authorization about the extra material used in his creative work (music, footage, photos or images);
  • That he has previously checked the truthfulness of the information in his project;
If any of these requirements is missing, the Editorial Staff takes no legal responsibility concerning the copyright protection and the project will be immediately eliminated from the catalogue.
If a project is subject of dispute, the Editorial Staff reserves the right to assess the case in a discretionary way, eliminating the content from the catalogue, if needed. It is not admitted promotional material, in the strict sense, of political parties, institutions or public authorities, religious faiths. The website is supposed to contain projects produced within the civil society (associations, movements, self-managed or self-organised groups).