My latest Guardian column is “Movie fans turn to piracy when the online cupboard is bare,” a report on the Open Rights Group’s study of the lawful options for people who want to watch great British movies online. The UK government and courts keep ratcheting up Internet censorship proposals because they say that there are so many lawful marketplaces that there’s no excuse for “piracy.” But ORG’s research shows that large swathes of critical material isn’t available for sale. And as we saw when major rightsholders pulled out of Hulu and iTunes before, the availability of their material on BitTorrent spiked — if you don’t offer lawful channels, you drive customers to unlawful markets.

Here’s what ORG found: though close to 100% of their sample were available as DVDs, more than half of the top 50 UK films of all time were not available as downloads. The numbers are only slightly better for Bafta winners: just 58% of Bafta best film winners since 1960 can be bought or rented as digital downloads (the bulk of these are through iTunes – take away the iTunes marketplace, which isn’t available unless you use Mac or Windows, and only 27% of the Bafta winners can be had legally).

And while recent blockbusters fare better, it’s still a patchwork, requiring the public to open accounts with several services to access the whole catalogue (which still has many important omissions).

But even in those marketplaces, movies are a bad deal – movie prices are about 30% to 50% higher when downloaded over the internet versus buying the same movies on DVDs. Some entertainment industry insiders argue that DVDs, boxes and so forth add negligible expense to their bottom line, but it’s hard to see how movie could cost less on physical DVDs than as ethereal bits, unless the explanation is price-gouging. To add insult to injury, the high-priced online versions are often sold at lower resolutions than the same movies on cheap DVDs.

Movie fans turn to piracy when the online cupboard is bare

Reminder: I’m heading to DC tomorrow to give a lunchtime talk at New America Foundation, from 1230h to 14h. Admission is free, but they’re looking for an RSVP.

Robert LLewellyn, Red Dwarf star, has a great little video series called Carpool, where he gives someone he’s interested a lift to work in a car that’s been fitted with cameras and microphones, and interviews that person while driving her or him to work. Last summer, Robert gave me a ride to the airport while I was on my way to the World Science Fiction Convention in Reno and interviewed me about ebooks and publishing. It came out great.

LLEWTUBE: Home Of Carpool & Fully Charged

A reminder: I’m giving a free lecture tonight at 17h at the Wharton School in Philadelphia; I’m in town because I’m the guest of honor at PhilCon, the world’s oldest science fiction convention.

The Guardian just published an investigative piece I’ve been working on since the summer: “How the BBC’s HD DRM plot was kept secret … and why.” It contains the previously secret text of a memo that the BBC sent to the UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom, explaining why they wanted to put DRM on publicly funded broadcasts.

The British public overwhelmingly rejected this approach, as did archivists, tech companies, activists, scholars, disabled rights groups and others. But Ofcom granted permission anyway, saying that the BBC’s secret memo made a compelling case for DRM being in the public interest. Both Ofcom and the BBC refused to disclose what the BBC’s arguments had been, declining both press queries and Freedom of Information requests.

Essentially, the BBC and Ofcom were saying that DRM was in the public interest, but it wasn’t in the public interest for the public to know why. I acquired a copy of the secret text and, as I think you’ll see, it does not contain any sort of compelling evidence in support of DRM. Rather, it makes flimsy and sometimes laughable arguments (for example, the BBC says HBO demands DRM on its programming, but HBO has an exclusive deal with BBC rival Sky, so it won’t be licensing new programming to the BBC, with our without DRM). What’s more, the BBC’s claim that this material was “commercially sensitive” doesn’t bear up to scrutiny — is it really “commercially sensitive” for the BBC to publish the fact that people like to watch movies on TV?

At the end of the day, I’m left with the impression I got the first time I met with Ofcom about this: that Ofcom wanted this and the BBC wanted it, and regardless of the public interest, the evidence, or the law, they’d get it. In my opinion, the secrecy that Ofcom and the BBC deployed here was only there to allow them to say, “Well, it seems difficult to understand why we’re doing this, but that’s only because we can’t tell you about the important, secret stuff.”

Here the BBC discusses its plan to accommodate educators, critics and archivists. It plans on establishing a confidential marketplace for more powerful “professional” TV receivers and recorders that can defeat its scrambling system. This bizarre system – creating an entity that would have to manufacture and distribute these devices, after approving the credentials of archivists, critics and scholars – is meant to be kept secret because it makes it clear that it would be easy to defeat the scheme.

So here you have the BBC claiming in one breath that its partners want effective protection from copying, and in the next breath saying that this won’t be very effective protection.

Funnily enough, “this will be easy to defeat” is a point that many of the individuals and institutions who formed the majority opposed to this plan made in their statements.

How the BBC’s HD DRM plot was kept secret … and why