I think the book analogy is maybe useful here too. Spelling errors and even grammar and continuity errors get corrected all the time in books. Books have the concept of an Edition, a basic version number referencing each batch of production ("printing" in the case of books). For the archeologists and the very curious, you can try to find earlier Editions and compare/contrast, they don't vanish from shelves but often live side-by-side, especially in libraries with endowments or other charges to collect the full edition history of certain books.
The book community and some publishing laws have built some required transparency here. Printings and Edition numbers are generally included as key front matter in the average book by all major publishers. Library catalogs understand that as key metadata.
Today film publishing doesn't include such metadata. It could. It probably should. Arguably Lucas himself experimented with trying to include such metadata when buliding the "Special Editions". "Special" isn't a great version number, sure, but it did make it explicit the idea that movies could have multiple editions intentionally, not just accidentally or by way of the implicit chance of change during processes like digitization and media transfers.
Relatedly, there's a lot of consternation in digital media that the side-by-side "sanctity" of editions isn't preserved. If you buy a book for Amazon's kindle at First Edition, it will silently deliver every updated Edition. Covers will change from the original art to "Motion Picture Inspired By This Book" art (or TV show, etc). There's a lot of questions about how much should Amazon disclose every time this happens and how much should Amazon be required to give you a copy of the edition you originally paid for on request?
(Maybe ideally every bit of media is collected in some form of "source control"? I wonder what it would take to make some form of source control the "required" or at least "most desired" form of digital distribution?)
The book community and some publishing laws have built some required transparency here. Printings and Edition numbers are generally included as key front matter in the average book by all major publishers. Library catalogs understand that as key metadata.
Today film publishing doesn't include such metadata. It could. It probably should. Arguably Lucas himself experimented with trying to include such metadata when buliding the "Special Editions". "Special" isn't a great version number, sure, but it did make it explicit the idea that movies could have multiple editions intentionally, not just accidentally or by way of the implicit chance of change during processes like digitization and media transfers.
Relatedly, there's a lot of consternation in digital media that the side-by-side "sanctity" of editions isn't preserved. If you buy a book for Amazon's kindle at First Edition, it will silently deliver every updated Edition. Covers will change from the original art to "Motion Picture Inspired By This Book" art (or TV show, etc). There's a lot of questions about how much should Amazon disclose every time this happens and how much should Amazon be required to give you a copy of the edition you originally paid for on request?
(Maybe ideally every bit of media is collected in some form of "source control"? I wonder what it would take to make some form of source control the "required" or at least "most desired" form of digital distribution?)