My basic understanding is that Jay Sylvester starting the site as a hosting site for a petition to release the original trilogy again. The petition quickly gained thousands of signatures and soon became a beacon of hope for the many fans of the OOT who thought they may have been suffering in silence for all these years but whose pain was really shared by many around the world. A discussion forum eventually opened which became a nesting ground for all the OOT fans who supported the petition, and a community of OOT fans, mostly home theater enthusiasts, blossomed, with the Fan Preservation/Edit forum the prime place for the sharing and knowledge of the ongoing LD transfer efforts.