If it’s ever all said and done, Occupy Wall Street will go down as the first fully internet-fueled social movement in the U.S. Occupy’s initial success, of course, was in spreading a virtual meme over corporeal reality. But now that the last few long-standing Occupy sites have been cleared, that the zombie cousins of toxic digital piracy bills—SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, and others—still roam the corridors of power, and that New York City activists will be holding mass anti-corporatist demonstrations throughout the day today, it’s as if the battle for economic justice and ownership of the internet has only just begun.Here’s a teaser peak of Motherboard's latest documentary, Free the Network, which looks at how DIY hack-tech is changing the discourse of modern day protests, like Occupy Wall Street. The story follows the trials of a pair of college dropouts who head up the Free Network Foundation, a peer-to-peer communications initiative seeking to liberate the global internet from corporate clutches by building their own decentralized, cooperatively owned, free network, one wi-fi hotspot at a time.The film premieres next month on Motherboard.VICE.com.
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