crissrudd4554 said:
I view it the same way. I dont watch Harmys or anyone elses projects here with the intent of it being so i dont have to own the official release, past or present. Its until we are given the official release we all desire so much. Now obviously many fan projects come from the minds of the creators and thus will never have an official, but i’ll just keep this topic to preservation. And as i said id like to think that growing attraction this site gives people and as you said people turning to fan edits rather than the official release will result in an official OUT release in the future.
My speculation is that the reason Disney has allowed Harmy’s work (and I can guarantee that at least someone from Lucasfilm has asked higher ups what to do about it) is because they’re planning on releasing the OUT in the near future. I’m not saying that they would release the OUT purely because of fan preservations, but rather that they were already planning or working on it, so they turned a blind eye to fan edits. Perhaps they hope that a satisfying release will eliminate hard feelings and unite the fan base so there’s less of a divide between the TFN types and the rest of the fans, as well as simultaneously shut down the need for fan preservations, which are a legal grey-area at best. If Disney wanted to they could easily put a stop to Despecialized (or even potentially get this site taken down due to its association with fan preservations), but they haven’t, most likely because prosecuting people for downloading a movie that they don’t even have available for purchase would create some extreme ill-will. They did understandably demand Verta’s restoration never be made available to the public, perhaps because they have their own restoration, and it would compete with theirs, while Harmy’s work is an edit created with the intent of being viewed until a legitimate blu ray is released. As I said earlier, I highly doubt that Disney will be so lenient with projects such as Star Wars Despecialized or Dark Jedi’s GOUT upscales once they release the theatrical versions.