Techdirt. Stories filed under "availability" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories filed under "availability"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Wed, 26 Oct 2011 10:04:27 PDT High Prices, Lack Of Availability Driving Lots Of Infringement Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111021/03534116446/high-prices-lack-availability-driving-lots-infringement.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111021/03534116446/high-prices-lack-availability-driving-lots-infringement.shtml help minimize infringement. Of course, if you don't make it available, or if you price it wrong, it just makes the problem worse. A new report out of the UK took a look at the availability and price online of some top films and found that the movie industry isn't doing a very good job, likely leading to much greater infringement.
DVDs are available for just shy of 100% of the films. But a wealth of British cultural history is simply not available through legal providers. Only 43% of the top 50 British films can be bought or rented online. Similarly, only 58% of the BAFTA Best Film award winners since 1960 have been made available.

The situation looks worse if iTunes is discounted. Excluding iTunes, only 27% of the BAFTA award winners are available, with 29% of the best British films. Only 6% of the best 50 British films are on Film4 OD or Virgin Media, with 14% available through a LoveFilm subscription and 4% through pay per view on LoveFilm.
The industry wants so badly to blame infringement for many of its structural problems. But, perhaps if it just focused on making the content available in a convenient fashion at a reasonable price, they'd realize that it really was just a business model issue all along and had nothing to do with "piracy."

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]]> well,-duh http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20111021/03534116446