At this point, I’m surprised nvjc and Harmy haven’t just removed these entirely.
And what would this accomplish, exactly? Despecialized is widely available from many places, and this would just make it so that profiteering jerks would be the only game in town.
Well for one, it would make the community go full vigilante justice on these motherfuckers. Sure they might get twice the sales for a while, but for every sale there would be 2 people every day saying something to the effect of “It really kills me that these were free online for everybody until assholes like you started selling these.” You think the constant spam wouldn’t at least get under these people’s skin even a little? I think a large part of the reason there isn’t big community outrage is that people are in the mindset that those sets on ebay and elsewhere are small scale, and aren’t getting the sales they are.
This is just my opinon, if you are create something in the fan edit/preservation community, somebody is always likely to take your work, put it on a disc - or now a download link - and then profit from it.
It’s been happening for many years - at conventions, market stalls, and for the past few years on ebay too.
It is not right, none of us like it - it’s bloody frustrating, and also a kick in the teeth for those that put so much hard work, time and love into their projects - yet there is no real way to effectively stop it (other than to carry on reporting it every time one pops up on there).
So we carry on reporting them, and spreading the word amongst our friends, colleagues, families and other Star Wars fans that these exist online for free.
For me, the ot.com is a little like Bespin in the Empire Strikes Back, we’re a small outfit that goes under the nose of the Empire re the releases that feature on here - we need to keep it that way (though no deals 😉)…