The Sept. 23 release of “Slacker Uprising” is billed as “the first major feature-length movie by a noted director to debut for free on the Internet.”

Moore, of course, was the unwilling giver of free downloads of his last movie, “Sicko,” when the documentary about the health care system was leaked before its release and made available via BitTorrents.

“This is being done entirely as a gift to my fans,” Moore wrote on the “Slacker Uprising” sign-up page. “The only return any of us are hoping for is the largest turnout of young voters ever at the polls in November. I think ‘Slacker Uprising’ will inspire million to get off the couch and give voting a chance.”

The movie is about Moore’s tour of 62 cities in election swing states during the Bush-Kerry election. In an effort to get slackers off their asses and into his hard-left speeches, the celebrity filmmaker offered up “a clean change of underwear, Ramen noodles, and a promise that no event would start before noon and no politician would be allowed to speak. ”

GOP leaders in Moore’s home state of Michigan asked prosecutors to bring criminal charges against the leftie filmmaker for offering the clean skivvies and instant noodles as a “bribe” to get young people to vote.

The movie already made the rounds of film festivals, under the title “Captain Mike Across America.”

Downloads supposedly are restricted to downloaders in North America. The sign-up page verifies this by having you check a box, so who knows.

The movie was funded by Miramax founders Bob and Harvey Weinstein, as well as Moore. The free download is being organized and distributed by Robert Greenwald’s socially active Brave New Films. Card-carrying lefties all, as you’d expect. “None of us want to see any profit from this,” Greenwald said as he breathed life into the “Slacker Uprising” press release.

The free download will be available for three weeks. The “Slacker Uprising” DVD comes to market after the debut at a cheap price point of $9.95. Promising extras not on the download include “The O’Reilly Factor for Kids,” “My Pet Goat” and “More Ramen and Clean Underwear.”

“If you’re a McCain fan, this film should probably be rated X,” Moore said.

Current members will be able to use Vongo through the month of September, then it’s curtains. The nasty part is, all downloaded movies in customers’ possession will self-destruct at that time. Cheapskates. The death of Vongo had been expected.

Interested parties are referred to Starz Play on the Verizon Store, a licensed version of the old Vongo download operation. (Starz Entertainment will continue to distribute movies download via third parties.) The new service will charge $5.99 a month for access to more than 1,000 movies.

The Vongo/Starz Play FAQ says the services remain the same except for pay-per-view movies. Fortunately, they’re waking the dead, so if you’re a Vongo subscriber you have to uninstall that application and install the Starz Play files.

Meanwhile, the Intel-backed ClickStar also faded out, Home Media magazine reports. It sought to bring the theatrical/video window down to a couple of weeks, but didn’t have the product to make it happen.

Vongo had been in operation for two years, working with major studios such as Disney and Sony. It experimented with one-price access to a batch of VOD movies (many of them junky).

Its download software had been preloaded on various Toshiba laptops and portable devices. Starz is an offshoot of cable overlord John Malone’s Liberty Media.

Look for the movie download shake-out to continue, as iTunes and Co. run off the smaller pioneer services.

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