File-sharing blog TorrentFreak recently estimated that users download the six Star Wars films from 1977’s A New Hope to 2005’s Revenge of the Sith around 1,500 to 3,000 times per day, which means over a half-million copies of the series are illegally downloaded each year. In hopes of capitalizing on this lasting demand and increasing excitement for this December seventh Star Wars film, Walt Disney Studios, Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox have decided to make the existing films available via iTunes and Google Play on Friday, allowing viewers to legally download them for the first time.

The three studios who own parts of the six-film series initially tried to discourage potential pirates by having the eight people who uploaded a stolen copy of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith to the Internet before its release arrested in California in 2005. The man who directly uploaded the film, Marc Hoaglin, pleaded guilty to federal copyright infringement and was sentenced to probation, but this did little to prevent a number of websites from continuing to illegally stream the films, TorrentFreak editor Ernesto Van Der Sar recently revealed that the Star Wars films are still downloaded more than other films from the same era, in part “because the average BitTorrent downloader is more interested in sci-fi – and due to their classic status.”

Despite understanding that most online fans of the Star Wars series already have illegal copies of the films downloaded to their computers, the three studios hope that new content such as deleted scenes and commentary will be enough to encourage viewers to purchase the iTunes and Google Play copies of the films. There is not yet word on whether the upcoming new Star Wars films will similarly be available for legal download upon their release.