Online movie services are poor, finds digital rights organisation

Research by the Open Rights Group (ORG) showing that there is a dearth of decent legal online movie-rental services has been welcomed by ISPA.

The umbrella organisation for internet service providers said that ORG's research, which found a lack of availability, poor pricing, quality issues and serious problems with the licensing of films, showed how difficult it was for consumers to source legitimate content.

For example, the ORG research found only 43 per cent of the top 50 British films can be bought or rented online. Similarly, only 58 per cent of the BAFTA Best Film Award winners since 1960 have been made available.

Nicholas Lansman, ISPA secretary general said: "ISPA welcomes research into the causes of copyright infringement and potential methods for increasing the revenues of rights holders.

"As the research shows, there should be more emphasis on ensuring content is available at a fair price and less emphasis on enforcement. There is also the serious problem of licensing content for online providers, which is causing the market to work ineffectively."

ORG decided to undertake the research after the High Court ruled in August, that BT must block content provider Newzbin2 for copyright infringement. At the time Peter Bradwell, copyright campaigner at the ORG said the blocking measures counterproductive and "technically naïve".

He warned then that: "Website-blocking is pointless and dangerous. These judgments won't work to stop infringement or boost creative industries. And there are serious risks of legitimate content being blocked and service slowdown."

ORG said, although the results of its latest research "should be seen as indicative only", it does indicated that the movie industry is slow in getting legal online content to people.

ORG said availability was better for recent best-selling releases but even this was still "very patchy"; for example, 86 per cent of best-selling films could be bought on Amazon and iTunes but only 63 per cent were available through Blinkbox.

It found rental services for these films fared "worse" with only 64 per cent available to rent on iTunes, 18 per cent on Lovefilm pay-per-view, 55 per cent on Blinkbox and 41 per cent on Film4 OD and Virgin Media.

The research also indicated that digital prices "do not compare favourably to those of DVDs". For example, the average price for the best-selling DVDs in August 2011 was £6.80. If bought as a digital download through iTunes, the average cost was £8.88 and on Blinkbox the price was £9.49.

Nicholas Lansman said this research should have an impact on certain aspects of the Digital Economy Act (DEA).

"ISPA would urge the Government to take this [research] into consideration if implementing aspects of the Digital Economy Act," he said.