Blockbuster Video: Going, Going, Going
Back on June 20th I did an item titled “Reader’s Digest: Going, Going, Going” that featured a list I found at the Huffington Post site (Crtl+Click here to go to the Huffington Post site) that listed 10 companies that would either disappear or drastically downsize over the next 12 months. Although Reader’s Digest was at the top of the list, second on the Huffington Post list was Blockbuster Video.
Just to prove I don’t “post and forget” I have just come across the following on engadget.com (Ctrl+Click here to go to the Engadget site).
I am not sure who put the “I *heart* P2P” on their window but I bet it was not the Blockbuster people. They probably hate peer-to-peer data sharing. It has basically put them out of business.
Now I am not going to try and tell you that I don’t use the torrents and P2P to find stuff. Not too many posts ago I told you that I got “How The West Was Won” (the TV telemovie series) via the torrent sites. However I typically only use torrents/P2P to get stuff I cannot readily get from JB Hi Fi for one reason or another. I have never downloaded a recent movie from the torrents. For those movies I felt compelled to see I have purchased them. And if I could have found “How The West Was Won” on DVD somewhere I could have purchased it, and still will if I find it anywhere.
But anyway, due to the easy availability of illegal copyright material—TV series and movies—from torrent and other P2P sites, businesses like Blockbuster Video are hurting. Not too many people are going to go and pay $4 (or there-abouts) for the overnight hire of a movie when, in not much more than 30 or 40 minutes over ADSL2 they can have it downloaded and ready to watch (depending on the degree of compression you are prepared to put up with).
