It's not a situation where you're asking artist-to-artist for permission and they're going to understand your lack of funds and admire your creative tenacity. These are lawyers. They're not nice guys. It's an entire office of legal eagles called the "antipiracy" division, and it's their job to uphold the law to the letter when it comes to these things because that's how they a) generate revenue, and b) legitimize their department's existence.
Lucasfilm is more benevolently tolerant than other studios when it comes to these matters. But that doesn't mean we have license to do whatever we want. That's why they send Cease & Desist letters, to give a fan who wasn't aware that it's illegal to do this sort of thing a chance to make it right before they get slapped with a lawsuit.
The other thing is, if you go to them and say, I've ripped the movies to my harddrive by bypassing the copy protection Lucasfilm embedded into the DVD, and now I intend to create a "fan edit" by altering the original, then distributing to as many people as possible for free, you've already admitted to committing a crime.
It's quite possible that they went to my MySpace page and just saw all the images and sent me the letter outright, without delving too deeply into what the site was for. There's a chance they might not've even noticed the fan edit stuff. If I write them back and ask for permission, I'm calling even more attention and risking even more legal action.
So, I just think my biggest mistake was setting up the MySpace page. There are so many people on there and you can't control who sees what. I don't think anyone on this site is in danger except for maybe the ones with MySpace pages like MagFan or Jambe Davdar.
And come May, if I send a few copies of Reborn out to a few of my friends on this site, and one of those copies just happens to show up on some torrent site somewhere or a PIF chain, then...oh well...what can I do?
I don't think you have anything to worry about Trooperman, as long as you stick to this site.
--InfoDroid