What makes it different from others?

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

The documentary centers on the fate of Mitnick, who is claimed to have been misrepresented in the feature film Takedown (2000) produced by Miramax and adapted from the book by the same name by Tsutomu Shimomura and John Markoff, which is based on disputed events. The film also documents a number of computer enthusiasts who drive across the United States searching for Miramax representatives and demonstrating their discontent with certain aspects of the bootleg script of Takedown they had acquired. Several notable and iconic figures from the hacking community appear in the movie, including Phiber Optik (Mark Abene), Bernie S (Ed Cummings), Alex Kasper, and (director) Emmanuel Goldstein (Eric Corley). Freedom Downtime tries to communicate a different view of the hacker community from that usually shown by the mainstream media, with hackers being depicted as curious people who rarely intend to cause damage, driven by a desire to explore and conduct pranks.

The evil disgusting piece of filth John Markoff of the Jew York Times ruined this guys life. He conspired with a disgusting Jap Dog to ruin Kevin Mitniks life.Mitnik did virtually nothing, but was indicted and jailed because of fear generated by the scum Jews in Hollywood and the Jew vermin in the Jew York Times.The Dog Markoff never even met Mitnik, but because of the usual GREED for money from these filthy parasites, it set out to write a book before Kevin was even arrested - check out the book TAKEDOWN, written by scum to take this guy down.

This is an interesting documentary about a subject that is often ignored - the court's and police's lack of knowledge about anything connected to a network, and medias habit of twisting or ignoring facts when they see they can make more money. As a non-American, there are some things that I don't get, but over all the film is very good at telling us how things work, and in my country (Sweden), the events in this film might get another point of view, since the police raid on the pirate bay in April 2006, where many things got eerily similar to what happened to Mitnick.In a film making point of view Freedom Downtime is lacking though, the editing could be better, and the sound mixing got some flaws (but I must say it was a long time since I saw the film, so I could remember incorrectly). Still, this is a must see for anyone interested in the hacker community, or the odd behaviour of the "justice".

before i comment, i am not a hackerbefore i watched this film, i knew little about kevins case(s) other than the fact that he had been held for over 3 years without a trial. i was baffled by the way the court system treated him. the courts held kevin in SOLITARY CONFINEMENT for 8 months because they were afraid he was going to hack their phone system!!! how are you going to hack a phone with no hacking tools?! did they think he was going to make a device out of spoons and a napkin or something? so they put him in solitary with murderers, rapists, armed robbers, and other violent criminals. this man had evidence that he had viewed source code from novell and sun, and made a few free phone calls. the only reason he was put in solitary was because of the media's view on him.not only were kevin's countless beatdowns from the government a big wakeup call to how i think about the court system, the other testimonials from hackers in the film were very moving. namely the testimonial from "Bearnie S." who was imprisoned because he had a box of "crystals" that could allow him to make free phone calls. he was severely beaten in jail, and was denied health care for several hours, and in the hospital was denied ANY pain killers (even aspirin or tylenol) for 2 days after having surgery.think the court system relies on justice? wrong. the media, racism/classism, propaganda, money, and other political influences are what controls the courts now. if this is the tesimonial of only a few hackers, imagine what horrible things have been done to minorities, non-violent drug criminals, and so on. watch this film. you will be informed and entertained at the same time.