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Just an idea I thought of a coordinated effort to inform SW forum members of the OOT preservation efforts

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 (Edited)

Would anyone be interested in forming a coordinated effort to inform the official Star Wars forum members of the OOT preservation efforts (in a nice fashion of course, no Lucas bashing, etc)? As in, one person posts first, his post is deleted (most likely), next person posts the same message and so on. We might be able to get a few people before the thread is deleted.

I just wanted to see what other people think, because I don’t want us to appear like a-holes or anything and give us a bad name.

Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here, this is the war room!

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hmmm... sounds interesting and gosh knows I like a good social movement but I'd imagine that many people who post there already know about the cause. Or maybe not- I've never read those boards. What statment did you have in mind?
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You don't want to attract too much attention, as I'm sure we've provided edits before that weren't 100% legal.
The Jedi are all but extinct.......
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Most of the people who read those boards are Lucas lovers, but I'm hoping we could at least get the word out. Honestly, I'm hoping more that the Lucas employees will notice rather than the board goers themselves. Most of them are helpless .

As for the statement, a simple announcement stating that since Mr. Lucas does not see fit to restore his films, we have taken the liberty for him. I'd suggest we'd only mention sets like TR47/Cowclops' Dr. Gonzo's, etc and nothing that takes from the official DVDs. We'll make it a point to mention:

A) We are not trying to steal profits in anyway. They're free of charge. We are only providing an outlet to fans since Mr. Lucas will not allow it.

B) Mr. Lucas already stated that the originals do not exist. You can't bootleg non-existent material, therefore these are not bootlegs. More like back-ups, since VHS and LD don't last forever.



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You don't want to attract too much attention, as I'm sure we've provided edits before that weren't 100% legal.


I think we should try and attract as much attention as possible. Personally, I think we're losing this battle and we need to get as much recognition as we can. Making sure of course that we make it clear that these ARE NOT the official DVDs we're copying. These do not exist on DVD, we're just making them available at no profit to ourselves.

Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here, this is the war room!

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ok just set everything up for me and ill help.
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i also don't think it's wise to draw too much attention to this great site and the many great efforts. technically, it's all very much illegal...at least, as I understand the laws involved.

if you want to raise exposure, I'd consider first reaching out to media who aren't directly tied to LFL. say ainticool.com or cinescape or something...even entertainment weekly. pick some influential writers and mail them copies of the Cowclops or Dr. Gonzo sets, along with a letter or press release or something. that might help stoke the fires.

on the other hand, again you'd have a lot of attention that might ultimately be unwanted....
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I doubt we'll accomplish anything without attention. Besides, how would a story look that has Lucas arresting his fans? After all, we're not talking about selling copies of ROTS DVD screeners here, we're providing free copies of the OOT.

And we don't have to mention this site at all.

Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here, this is the war room!

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Originally posted by: bad_karma24
I doubt we'll accomplish anything without attention. Besides, how would a story look that has Lucas arresting his fans? After all, we're not talking about selling copies of ROTS DVD screeners here, we're providing free copies of the OOT.

And we don't have to mention this site at all.


Ah, ok....now we are getting somewhere. I thought you wanted to promote this site. If you are just talking about the OOT cause, then ya....sure, sounds like a good idea.

BTW....where do you guys get your Star Wars news? TFn is terrible, they practically didn't report the Who's Your Daddy posters until the day they were released.

The Jedi are all but extinct.......
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" Our operation is small enough not to be noticed, which is advantageous for everybody -
since our customers are anxious to avoid attracting attention to themselves."
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Well, who's with me on this? I'd like to get at least five or so people to do it, just to spread the word. I know there's a some disagreement between getting attention/not wanting attention, but just staying in our little hole here won't accomplish a thing. If anyone out there really takes offense to this let me know, because I want people's opinions on this. I don't want to bring this whole thing down.

Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here, this is the war room!

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Sort of a two fold mission. They are a lot of people out there (people on the official boards included) that are not aware that there is any way to get the OOT on DVD. So, they're stuck with the official releases. One of the objectives of this is to let them know that there is another way, in addition to spending insane amounts on eBay.

Secondly, I also want to let the people at Lucasfilm know that "we will not go quietly into the night." Is this illegal? Hell, these are classic films for christsakes. They can't just shovel sh*t in our faces and not expect some resistance. Hopefully we can get some official response out of this (and no, not the standard "creative changes" BS they sent last time). I'm tired of getting blank answers and want to take action.

Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here, this is the war room!

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WWJD?

In other words... What would JAY do????

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Originally posted by: DarthAstuart
i also don't think it's wise to draw too much attention to this great site and the many great efforts. technically, it's all very much illegal...at least, as I understand the laws involved.

if you want to raise exposure, I'd consider first reaching out to media who aren't directly tied to LFL. say ainticool.com or cinescape or something...even entertainment weekly. pick some influential writers and mail them copies of the Cowclops or Dr. Gonzo sets, along with a letter or press release or something. that might help stoke the fires.

on the other hand, again you'd have a lot of attention that might ultimately be unwanted....


dude this site is not illegal, ad i can tell you right now lucas knows about this.
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of course the site is not illegal, but making and giving away copyies of the OOT without Lucas's permission is technically illegal. Shim how can you be so sure Lucas knows about this site?
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For one thing, the internet is smaller than you think.
"I don't mind if you don't like my manners. I don't like them myself. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings."
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I'm in.
Everybody should stop fretting about legalities. I have so far bought the O-OT legally on VHS 3 times, the SEs on VHS once and the 2004 DVDs, therefore I consider my LD rips to be backup copies and if the O-OT was oficially released I would gladly throw them away and purchase an official copy. I have no worries about the legalities or morals of our cause and drawing attention to it is what we need to do, not hide away worried about getting sued (which we won't be).

War does not make one great.

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Actually, if you bring the war to him this site probably will receive C&Ds simply because LucasFilm has to be seen to be protecting their copyrighted material.

It is quite complicated, but LucasFilm can know about this site (which I'm sure they do), but don't have to do anything 'til it is publicly known that they know about the site (which would occur if we mentioned it on their own site). If it does become publicly known then if they do nothing then they actually bring trouble on themselves, if someone does start selling the OOT illegally then the crooks can bring up this case in court if LucasFilm ever sued them. The fact that LucasFilm had previously done nothing would help the crooks, so LucasFilm will basically HAVE to go after us, even if they don't want to (which I guess is the case or they already would have sued us).

A little hard to comprehend if you don't know too much about copyright, but just take it as a recommendation NOT to spam the SW.com boards. I'd say feel free to spam any non-Lucas affiliated sites (as DarthAstuart mentioned), but as a forum administrator and user, I really dislike spam campaigns. They will just make forum users think we are over-zealous jerks and make a mental note never to visit this site.

So I strongly recommend that we just keep doing what we currently do, telling interested friends and associates about it in regular conversation or forum posting. If anyone was really interested in this sort of thing and were internet savvy then they can find this site very easily themselves (if they weren't internet savvy then they wouldn't be interested in visiting a site or downloading DVD content anyway). Remember there are already thousands of people that have signed the petition and probably several thousand more that haven't signed because they know online petitions do absolutely nothing! This cause doesn't really need more publicity, heck, I'm here and I don't even think of myself as much of a SW fan!

Choice is simple really, I don't want to kill worthwhile projects and make myself look like a jerk.

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Everything is better on a laserdisc. Whatever happened to the laserdisc? Laserdisc!

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Alright, I really want to get all opinions before I jump the gun. I'm gonna be gone for a bit, so if anyone wants to advance this that's cool, but I can't do much until I have net access again in a few days.

Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here, this is the war room!

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Originally posted by: Yoda Is Your Father I have so far bought the O-OT legally on VHS 3 times...therefore I consider my LD rips to be backup copies

LFL isn't really interested in what you consider your LD rips to be.
They'll be interested in stopping us from getting the movies we want.


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Originally posted by: Yoda Is Your Father
I have no worries about the legalities or morals of our cause and drawing attention to it is what we need to do, not hide away worried about getting sued (which we won't be).


Better be careful. You may end up making "a deal that'll keep the Empire out of here forever".

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Originally posted by: Warbler
of course the site is not illegal, but making and giving away copyies of the OOT without Lucas's permission is technically illegal. Shim how can you be so sure Lucas knows about this site?


this site has nothing to do with that, it is completely independant of it, and jay has warned people to not talk about it on here, so i suggest they dont.
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Originally posted by: Shimraa
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Originally posted by: Warbler
of course the site is not illegal, but making and giving away copyies of the OOT without Lucas's permission is technically illegal. Shim how can you be so sure Lucas knows about this site?


this site has nothing to do with that, it is completely independant of it, and jay has warned people to not talk about it on here, so i suggest they dont.


I agree, it's NOT a good idea to envolve originaltrilogy dot com with this.
“Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” — Nazi Reich Marshal Hermann Goering
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There are people in the forums of the Official site which are worth contacting: for instance:
http://forums.starwars.com/thread.jspa?threadID=221776&tstart=125
Contacting these kind of people who have an initial interest, might be worthwhile, but just putting out a blanket statement is just inviting the end, imo. One mention of Fan Preservation and there's a certain mindset which will yell copyright infringement until they're Twilek blue.

(as for the individual in the previously mentioned post, i've been unsuccessful in contacting them. I've posted in the thread, and i did find the same name registered in tfn's JC forums. but i haven't heard anything back. So if someone can come up with a way to ask this person what they've got and attempt to get them over here, it would be much appreciated. 20 VHS tapes, that's alot of interesting stuff, at least to me)
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Hmm... well perhaps a letter writing campaign would help as well. Do a "Shawshank Redemption" type thing where we just keep hounding them with letters until they give in?

Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here, this is the war room!