Park Wars Unleashed

Park Wars, a Star Wars: the Phantom Menace spoof, features characters from South Park and audio lifted directly from The Phantom Menace. The film was originally intended to be 64 minutes long but was cut to 15 minutes after discussion with Lucasfilm.

"We came to the conclusion we couldn't just rip off an hour's worth of audio from the Phantom Menace," said Ayaz Asif, producer of Park Wars. The film can be seen at parkwars.com in Quicktime format at 100Kbps and 300Kbps, and also as a download.

Comedy Central, South Park's copyright holder, was impressed with the quality of the parody and decided not to take legal action, Asif said.

Lucasfilm has endorsed the concept of Star Wars parodies in the form of the Official Star Wars Fan Film Network, the result of a partnership between Lucasfilm and AtomFilms.

But Lucasfilm has begun to take an aggressive stance on Internet-related copyright infringement. Information provided to the FBI by Lucasfilm last year led to the arrest and prosecution of Jason Spatafore for copying The Phantom Menace and making it available online. Spatafore pled guilty to criminal copyright infringement and will be sentenced in San Francisco on March 23.