The documentary follows the exploits of Weev, an annoying "good troll" who fights on the Internet for freedom of speech and action. While many of the things described and said are totally true, the failure of the film stands in the presentation. A clone after any nutcase documentary out there, it does nothing to make you empathize with the characters or even understand what is going on, it just rants. Frankly, I feel less for poor Weev after watching the film than before when I was acquainted with just the facts!
Worse, it is made by members of a small community about members of this community and for members of this community. I don't see anyone outside the tiny group of hacktivists "switching sides" because they watched the film, I highly doubt they will even consider watching it. Therefore I can only consider this documentary a failure.
I rated the film so highly because if someone does pay attention, there are a lot of things there that need to be made known. What I am talking about is the vast gap between how an offence is perceived in "real life" and how in the "virtual world". Pay extra attention to the part where it says corporations and state have been humiliated, therefore they had to react like the big bullies they are. The bit when the FBI accused the mother of a young hacker of obstructing justice because the son had an incriminating laptop in the house made me sick, even if I already knew about it.
It is too bad that most of the documentary was an apology for Weev's action and less a well argued discussion on what went wrong with the entire arrest. In short, he was arrested for giving to a journalist the data collected from a really badly designed web page that allowed access to the information of other logged users. We have to ask ourselves if the same would have applied to someone entering a house with no door and reading the papers left on the table.
Worse, it is made by members of a small community about members of this community and for members of this community. I don't see anyone outside the tiny group of hacktivists "switching sides" because they watched the film, I highly doubt they will even consider watching it. Therefore I can only consider this documentary a failure.
I rated the film so highly because if someone does pay attention, there are a lot of things there that need to be made known. What I am talking about is the vast gap between how an offence is perceived in "real life" and how in the "virtual world". Pay extra attention to the part where it says corporations and state have been humiliated, therefore they had to react like the big bullies they are. The bit when the FBI accused the mother of a young hacker of obstructing justice because the son had an incriminating laptop in the house made me sick, even if I already knew about it.
It is too bad that most of the documentary was an apology for Weev's action and less a well argued discussion on what went wrong with the entire arrest. In short, he was arrested for giving to a journalist the data collected from a really badly designed web page that allowed access to the information of other logged users. We have to ask ourselves if the same would have applied to someone entering a house with no door and reading the papers left on the table.
