Over the weekend I watched The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz. After much anticipation more than a month ago, I wasn’t able to watch it in theaters at Bluelight Cinemas with the movie’s limited theater release on July 4th.

It wasn’t really clear if Bluelight was actually showing the movie. First, Bluelight’s website showed it would be showing the movie, and then it showed that it wouldn’t. And their automated machine over the phone also didn’t mention the movie at all. But the movie’s official website said yes, and @internetsownboy tweeted would be coming to Bluelight as originally scheduled.

It wasn’t worth the drive to see if Bluelight was going to show the movie the day it came out. So my friend and I decided to watch it at home whenever we were free again. And so we watched it.

Anyway, the movie’s good. It does a good job telling the story of Aaron Swartz in a nutshell (an almost two-hour long nutshell). A lot of the parts of his life you can read about online on his blog or elsewhere, such as Wikipedia. The web of links you find online will lead you to many articles, but it’s nice to see it visually documented during the film. I really enjoyed seeing it.

“Enjoyed” probably not the right word. I suppose I should say that I found it interesting. It’s an interesting movie.¹

I highly recommend a watch. It’s available on YouTube. Just as Marco says, you’re free to watch it due to the film’s Creative Commons license. Yay.