Are Video Stores Doomed Now You Can Get Movies Online?

By Bernadette Stanton

When a London company announced several years ago that it was offering the first legal service to Download Twilight Saga Eclipse Free Online Movie, video store owners around the world began worrying about their future.

Why, after all, would customers leave the comfort of their home to wander through a store to study video covers when anybody can do the same thing at their home keyboard? Why go out into the rain or snow or summer's heat when everything's available -- legally -- at the click of a mouse?

Another reason to avoid illegal downloads is quality. Viruses are one more reason. The creators of viruses constantly have to devise new and clever ways to infect the unsuspecting public.

Just a few months ago, somebody sitting at their home computer uploaded a high-quality copy of a newly released film onto a certain illegal person-to-person file-sharing network. Within weeks, that one file had been downloaded by 30,408 people on six continents. Dozens of other illegal copies of the movie found their way onto the hard drives of many thousands more.

However, uploading the film and downloading it onto home computers are crimes. Hollywood lost an estimated $2.3 billion to internet piracy just a few years ago. Another $3.8 billion was lost to bootlegged DVDs and other "hard goods" piracy that same year. Hollywood's total annual income that year was estimated to be just under $45 billion. So, with $6.2 million slipping through their fingers it should not be surprising that the movie industry is battling piracy with increasing vigor. Some would say China is the capital of movie piracy. Indeed, within hours of a film being released nationwide in the U. S., illegal DVD copies are available on the street in Shanghai and Beijing. About 90 percent of DVDs sold in China are bootlegged. However, Hollywood reports that it even loses even more money because of internet piracy in North America and Europe.

Such pirates fill a gap overseas where legitimate markets are heavily restricted. So the pirates may actually be pointing the way to new markets that the internet can open. Once upon a time, the big movie studios opposed the release of their movies on TV. They also fought the development of cable movie channels such as HBO. Then they resisted VHS and DVD marketing. Hollywood feared that TV, cable and home video would destroy movie theaters.

Some of the world's biggest DVD-counterfeiters are in China, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. One DVD mill near Manila was cranking out 14 million DVDs annually. Indeed, bootlegged DVDs traceable to China have been identified in at least 25 countries. So it will be with downloadable movies. Already a Sweden-based site functions much like Google, listing movies that are illegally available for free download. In a recent visit to that site, investigators found more than 5 million users online, trading illegally copied films.

So, expect the pirates to exploit the internet. But watch out for Hollywood to figure out clever strategies as well -- as the ability to Download Twilight Saga Eclipse Free Online Movie becomes a part of everyday life.

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