[zorked]

The problem there is just technological: the problem with movies and video was the unavailability of good enough codecs/large enough media+bandwidth. Otherwise BBS would have been a hell of a party for those too.

For software my local BBSs, very very far from any rich country, somehow managed to get every major software release a few days before launch day. Yes, before. It was all one huge global network already, just a bit asynchronous.