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Well, Spielberg himself replaced guns with walkies-talkies in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.T._the_Extra-Terrestrial#/me...

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Literally the subhed of the article: "Director has criticised the practice of re-editing older films while expressing remorse over removing guns in a later edition of ET"

That was my first thought upon reading the title. However, people learn, grow, and change. I believe his argument will carry more weight with the acknowledgment and duscussion of his own prior decision. It's not hypocrisy; it's a lesson learned.

And he's a director! His job is to experiment and use new tools as they come available, and he's realized he made a mistake.

I have no problem with people making new versions of existing works; the problem I have is destroying the originals; even if destroyed by the author. The existence of copyright itself is a "deal" between society and an individual, we give the individual certain rights and privileges in exchange for certain benefits to society.

Only now has the ability to go back and change things resulted in large-scale destruction of personal copies of that original thing.

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