The celebrated "open source documentary" RIP: A Remix Manifesto has found a progressive, forward-thinking distributor that is making the film available as a download on a pay-what-you-want basis (alas, the offer is US only, due to the insanity of the film industry):
It's been a peculiar road to get to the point where we could release the film as a download, because obviously this is something we wanted to do right from the get go. But since we have so many partners that helped us make the film, including theatrical and television distributors, it was a delicate balancing act to make sure the good faith they showed in making the film would be rewarded, that we wouldn't undercut their efforts to promote and recoup on the film by giving it away. So we waited a while before launching the various online permutations. The National Film Board [of Canada] put up a chaptered version during our U.S. premiere at South by Southwest in March, and we embedded calls to action into each chapter.
Around SXSW, we partnered with two American partners — Disinformation for our DVD release, and BSide for the theatrical side of things. And at the first meeting I had with them, it became clear that we needed to go down this road. We knew the film would appear on file-sharing networks immediately and we knew the audience for the film wanted and expected it to be online. So knowing that, we wanted there to be a method for those who wanted to pay to do so.
Update: Director Brett Gaylor adds, "Anyone anywhere in the world can watch it for free at www.nfb.ca/rip,
and also at opensourcecinema.org it can be watched and remixed.
