Alternative Freedom: documenting the war on culture

Increasingly, the battle to control what culture is, does and where it goes is getting hotter in the U.S. At the forefront of this battle, fighting for the rights of independent artists and audiences is the Free Culture movement, a largely student-run collective organization. From their manifesto:

The mission of the Free Culture movement is to build a bottom-up, participatory structure to society and culture, rather than a top-down, closed, proprietary structure. Through the democratizing power of digital technology and the Internet, we can place the tools of creation and distribution, communication and collaboration, teaching and learning into the hands of the common person -- and with a truly active, connected, informed citizenry, injustice and oppression will slowly but surely vanish from the earth.

A new documentary film featuring Lawrence Lessig, Richard Stallman, Danger Mouse and other "stars" of the movement has been released: "Alternative Freedom." The reviews are coming in strong and opening the eyes of this culture war beyond the somewhat geeky domains of developers and coders. It's playing this weekend at New York City's Pioneer Theater, and Lawrence Lessig will be speaking at the screening on Saturday night. Other cities coming soon; check the movie blog regularly for more details.