LucasFilm is taking a progressive tack and encouraging the distribution of Star Wars-universe fan films online via sites such as YouTube.

From Star Wars: Blogs:

Lucasfilm has been informed that YouTube recently removed from its site several fan-made Star Wars spoofs and parodies. We would like the fan film community to know that this was not done at our request.

Apparently the action was taken by YouTube as a result of a misunderstanding of a request to remove an item containing material taken from starwars.com without our permission. We have asked YouTube to restore any works that they inadvertently removed.

This approach encourages the creative community of fans, while still allowing control over the distribution of the company’s own copyrighted material.