According to the NYPost, Blockbuster is on its last legs, and is looking for an equity partner as it runs completely out of money.
Citing insider sources, Blockbuster needs $213.5 million in cash to pay off loans and interest for 2010, with a similar amount coming due in 2011. According to latest financials, the company only has about $211 million in cash, and is expected to lose as much as $120 million in 2010, leaving them with no ability to pay off the loans unless they sell more of their assets, or complete larger cost cutting measures.
After the report, Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes disagreed with the assessment: “All your numbers are wrong. They bear no resemblance to any materials we have in the market.” Any talks with private equity firms are for “strategic alternatives,” not to add capital infusions.
In February, Blockbuster said they owed $105 million in interest payments for 2010, but did not add what they needed to pay in principal.
Result for: measures
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) being brokered by the U.S. government on behalf of the entertainment industry has caught the attention of the European Data Protection Supervisor, Peter Hustinx. He authored an opinion paper on several topics that include ACTA, and said he was concerned that it violated the legal rights of citizens in nations across Europe.
“The EDPS strongly encourages the European Commission to establish a public and transparent dialogue on ACTA, possibly by means of a public consultation, which would also help ensuring that the measures to be adopted are compliant with EU privacy and data protection law requirements,” Hustinx writes in his opinion piece. ACTA has already found itself in the line of fire from the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation for some of its provisions.
There are fears that ACTA includes measures to enable warrantless searches of citizens and destruction of devices containing potentially pirated content. Recently in the UK, Junior business minister David Lammy said documents related to ACTA will not be put in the House of Commons library, due to the desire for other countries to keep the negotiations secret.
The European Commission said recently that ACTA will not go any further than current EU policies related to copyright infringement, and dismissed fears that ACTA will lead to border searches of iPods and other gadgets in case they contain pirated multimedia content.
“EU customs, frequently confronted with traffics of drugs, weapons or people, do neither have the time nor the legal basis to look for a couple of pirated songs on an iPod music player or laptop computer, and there is no intention to change this,” the Commission said at the time.
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Result for: measures
In what is frankly a head-scratching display of skewed reasoning, Sony has said today that it will not promote the sleeper hit Moon (starring Sam Rockwell) for an Oscar award because the movie does not come out on DVD in the U.S. until later this month and the company does not want to have screeners leaked to the Internet.
Last week, director Duncan Jones tweeted his displeasure at Sony’s decision to not send screeners out, citing the fact that Moon had been successful (awards-wise) in many other smaller awards shows. You can view his tweets here.
Sony’s response (via MovieLine): “The DVD and Blu-ray come out on Jan. 12 — next Tuesday — and it was felt that to preserve the integrity of the film, we didn’t want to send screeners. We’re concerned about piracy. The thing about Moon is that its particular genre is very predisposed toward being uploaded onto the Web. We really just wanted to protect that aspect of it. I’’s a simple as that. […] A lot of publicity for Moon is coming out next week. Hopefully that will remind all the consumers, all the readers — and especially any awards folks — that this terrific title is out there.”
That is all good and well Sony, however, it is notable for me to publish that DVD copies of Moon have been available online since late October, and Blu-ray copies have been available since November.
