Having actually spoken to some of the people who work on this stuff at the BBC, they don't want to. They want to make as much quality television accessible to as many people as possible.

In fact, internal systems already exist for accessing any BBC programme from the last (n) years. There's also a system for schools and universities that gives you access to the last year or so of programming. It's pressures from external production companies that prevent these from being rolled out to the public.

However, there will always be rights issues until the state has complete ownership over all TV production - which is never going to happen.

(Also - what's 'evil' about content creators wanting to protect their intellectual property and income?)