I heard about Steal This Film II when it was originally released, and I meant to watch it early on…but never got around to it. Shame on me…I recently finished it, and it was outstanding. And I’m even more excited now, b/c I’m in the middle of exploring the raw footage that the film was based on.

Wow…this is truly awesome!! The film was great, but as in the case of every documentary, there’s far more raw footage than made it into the finished work. All this footage is now available for viewing, and it’s an deep, engaging dive into the concepts and questions brought up by the film (copyright, intellectual property, creativity, and the future of distribution, for starters). It gets better…the footage is all under Creative Commons, and most of it is under the Attribution-ShareAlike (BY-SA) license, which allows for derivative reuse. It’s mind-boggling, really.

Some of my favorite thinkers in this space are represented, including Eben Moglen, Yochai Benkler, and Fred von Lohmann (though not limited to them by any means). Regardless of your knowledge level on these topics, there’s probably more than one interview you’ll enjoy and learn from here.