Aldarion said:

Frank your Majesty said:

Danfun128 said:

joefavs said:

...and since Fox owns ANH until the end of time...

To this (umm...) day I still don't understand what that means. :P

It means that Fox owns the distribution rights for Star Wars forever, if they don't make a new deal. In contrast to the rights for Empire and Jedi, which will (or already did?) return to Lucasfilm.

Actually, not forever... Distribution rights are apart of Copright Law. For works made before 1978 (and owned by a corporation), the copyright lasts for 95 years from the date the work was published. So as of now, Star Wars enters public domain in 2073. Of course, Congress can extend the copyright terms anytime they want (like in 1998), so it could be later than 2073.

None of the fans want to wait until then or later for the unaltered versions of the original trilogy to be made available in HD Blu-Ray or whatever home video format is in the future. Our friend Harmy made the next best thing, so at least there's that. If only Lucas wasn't so stubborn and just let the National Film Registry have the film negatives to the threatrical versions for preservation. If Lucas is retired from Lucasfilms, that means he passed ownership of his company to someone else. Thus what he should have no say what version of Star Wars is made public.