It’s amazing the Anonymous documentary We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists ever saw the light of day.

It’s not that no theaters wanted to show it — it performed well at film festivals — or that filmmaker Brian Knappenberger didn’t want to release it. He just couldn’t finish it. And that’s just the way it goes when you’re making a documentary about an ever-expanding and ever-evolving group like Anonymous.

— Brian Knappenberger “I often wonder if I started the film now if it would have the same feel and tone. Anonymous has changed and evolved a lot.”

“There’s that whole thing where it’s not done, it’s just due,” Knappenberger said in an interview with Wired. “I often wonder if I started the film now if it would have the same feel and tone. Anonymous has changed and evolved a lot. When we started, [former Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak was still in power, and none of the last 45 minutes of the film had even happened yet.”

Nevertheless Knappenberger, who directed, wrote and produced the film, has finally put a bow on his documentary and is ready to release it to the world. The film can now be bought — DRM-free, naturally — through the We Are Legion website. It is also on iTunes and available for purchase on DVD and Blu-ray.

Releasing We Are Legion into the wild could prove to be a watershed moment for the public’s understanding of what Anonymous is and what the group does. Not only could the documentary help the outside world understand the mask-wearing revolutionaries at Occupy protests, it could serve as a sort of Rosetta stone for those looking to understand activism in the 21st century, if Anonymous’ style of online civil disobedience becomes commonplace.

Since the film celebrates a group that vehemently opposed SOPA and PIPA, it only seems right that its creators should release it online and without copyright protections. But that doesn’t mean Knappenberger didn’t talk to Hollywood about distributing We Are Legion through traditional means, like a theatrical run or a stint on a cable network.

“We turned down a couple of big offers, actually, because we wanted to do it digitally, just to do it Louis C.K.-style from the website,” Knappenberger said, declining to name which studios or networks he turned down. “A couple of them were kind of painful to walk away from, but I felt like it had to be a digital download with this film.”

— Brian Knappenberger “We turned down a couple of big offers, actually, because we wanted to do it digitally, just to do it Louis C.K.-style.”

We Are Legion began shaping up in earnest after Knappenberger became fascinated with Anonymous’ actions against banks that banned WikiLeaks, but the film goes all the way back to the early days of hacking, with activist groups like Cult of the Dead Cow and Electronic Disturbance Theater.

Tracing that history forward to Anonymous’ beginnings in 4chan, the documentary digs deep into the world of the hacktivists, talking to real Anons about their defense of WikiLeaks, their campaign against Scientology, and their influence in political actions, from Occupy Wall Street to the uprisings of the Arab Spring.

Following a debut earlier this year at the Slamdance film festival in Utah, We Are Legion has gone through a lot of edits and changes, Knappenberger said. New interviews with sources like Wired contributor Quinn Norton, as well as a whole section about the LulzSec-leader-turned-informant “Sabu,” were added to the film.

Part of what made the film so hard to complete was the sheer magnitude of the hacktivist collective’s actions, with Anons in various corners waving the Anonymous banner for very different reasons.

“I remember going to Occupy Wall Street protests asking people in Guy Fawkes masks about Anonymous and having them just not know anything about Scientology, not a clue that Anonymous had ever attacked Scientology,” Knappenberger said. “It’s a bizarre phenomenon.”

Knappenberger is taking something of a risk releasing his film the way he is. The filmmaker, who had an earlier version of his documentary posted online (he didn’t go after the leakers), won’t reveal what his budget was for We Are Legion, but noted that there is “definitely concern” that the film won’t recoup its costs.

“The traditional method is a lot safer,” said Knappenberger, whose next project is focused on LulzSec and Sabu. Still, if the film makes back its costs, 10 percent of the profits will be donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The direct download and stream of the movie is being handled by online video platform VHX, which ran a similar release Indie Game: The Movie earlier this year.

“I always joke when I talk to them that we have similar audiences, only mine is angrier,” said Knappenberger.