Originally posted by: zombie84
The whole point of that little "they dont exist to me" stance of Lucas' wasn't that he didn't care, but that he very much did care, that is cared that they remain unavailable. Making them easily and freely accessible to everyone is the antithesis to Lucas' entire philosophy, especially when hundreds of companies will begin selling them, as happens in public domain fare (eg Night of the Living Dead, Three Stooges, etc., commonly seen in VHS>DVD transfers in the dollar bin). In order to properly present a film it takes a few grand investment in a decent transfer and often restoration work. The best case scenario is if a company like Criterion aquired the home video rights to it, but of course they charge about $50 per video because they always invest heavily into restoration.
Basically, making it public domain would hurt us in every way and benefit no one. What we do now (preserving, etc.) is generally accepted by legal standards even though we are technically making infractions, so legitimacy has never been a problem; none of us ever sells are stuff. Making it public domain would change nothing because the copies we distribute are ones transfered by Lucasfilm and Fox, and thus are their properties; just as Night of the Living Dead is public domain, you would still be sued for pirating Anchor Bay's DVD transfer of that film. In order to get around the legal angle you would have to obtain or purchase a print and transfer it yourself, which would be costly to start with and for sure it would need major restoration work done. Companies that do this professionally spends tens of thousands of dollars and hundreds of man hours getting this stuff right. Making it public domain would possibly allow a company willing to invest some cash to produce a pretty decent transfer that is an improvement over the GOUT but we would still have to pay money for it and would get sued for distributing this particular transfer. And all companies would be working with would be release prints anyway, no intermediate or o-neg's like Lucasfilm used for the SE and GOUT since those original material are still protected by the production company.
Bingo. The funny thing is, despite the fact that mostly all of us have at least one or another of the preservation projects sitting on our DVD shelves, we've likely all bought the 2004 discs, the 2006 discs and whatever comes out down the line.
No point in making these public domain the stave off "bootleggers." Bootleggers who are more than willing to buy the product legitimately, ironically enough.
