Difference being the Medium it's presented in. You have to rent the films from the film distribution company. We went through this in San Francisco when we did a charity fundraiser and showed the LOTR Trilogy. The company's name was Criterion interesting enough. New Line was supportive in this. We even got a nod and wink saying that even though we paid for the film print rentals, somehow "accidentally" showing the extended editions was not something they had control over.

We tried to do the same deal with the original trilogy. We were turned down flat by Lucasfilm. Even contacting LFL people I knew directly yielded the fact that any charity screenings of the films would have to be done by LFL themselves -- such as the charity screenings before ROTS came out with big hoopla and advertiserment.

So we could not just pop in a DVD and project it, technically we would not have the rights to it.

However, and this may be strange yet bizarre idea, nothing is to stop people from taking their projectors and showing it to say private party I think, not a con. In fact I think we should go for a national screening day, a con of any sort would raise the hackles of LFL. Unless we do something that is completely unannouned and spontaneous and unadvertisd during the middle of an existing con like Dragon Con.