It still stands, though, that in the cases of all those hypothetical arguments in the first post on this thread, those are all criticisms of the original work for which a revision of the work does not exist. In the case of SW, Lucas originally released the movies to the world in one form. A form which stood for nearly 20 years in the case of all three films, before being changed. That's 20 years of being ingrained in the public consciousness. He has a duty to preserve those versions for the people who grew up and loved his films for those 20 years and gave him the financial backing to be able to go back and revisit them. He can change them all he wants, I don't care. They are HIS movies and he can do with them as HE pleases. Just make sure you preserve what the public knows as well. If he had never released the films in the original version, this would be a non issue. But he did and therefore he needs to preserve them for the sake of the fans and, even more importantly, for the sake of film history.

If he cannot see the whole film history argument, then his film needs to be removed from the AFI Top 100 list as the version that was voted on to that list no longer exists in his words. Check the AFI list, it says "(1977)" after Star Wars. Not "(1997)". Not "(2004)".