I want to make it clear i was not attacking faneditors at all. There are some fineedits and editors out there. I am more of a preservation fan than a fan of fan edits except in certain cases where the film is actually improved or an interesting alternate take is produced on the film or its characters.
I hope the community weathers this storm and comes out okay.
I was in no way attacking Boon or the members of ot.com or fanedit.org just stating how this legal gray area in the past has become such a heated issue.
Almost reminds me of fansubbing which is a niche fandom in animation and anime. People do it for the love of the genre, and also they get a good learning experience out of it. Heck even faneditors might come to respect the art of editing that the pros do. At least the ones who are not hacks.
Still i find it funny the films of these directors and moviemakers are still available it is not as if they are replaced by a fan edit. Unlike say when George Lucas did his own fanedits of the star wars trilogy and buried the originals. But it is okay for him to butcher them because thy are his intellectual property.
Using someone's intellectual property these days without paying or getting permission has become the same as Stealing a physical object. It would be like back in the day kids downloaded mps without paying and they said it was not the same as stealing a cd from a store. I guess morally you could make an arguement they are the same without paying the artist their fee for use. Still do these poor kids who eventual get out of school and get jobs buy cds and dvds and eventually the studios make a profit out of it?
How many people who use bitorrent just sample an artists works and if they like it buy it?
Does anyone know what edit was the most objectionable to the MPAA ot was it the whole of fanedit.org site?
I guess the one edit that has been so popular and might have just pissed someone off at Lucasfilm maybe Adywan's edit. I can see George saying "how dare some fan actually make a better special edition than i did".