Culture Secretary Andy Burnham has vowed to create a regulatory body for video-on-demand services, "led and funded by the industry", PaidContent:UK reports. All media owners providing VoD will "need to notify the co-regulator they are providing a service".

"We remain focussed on our online growth" said ITV's CEO Michael Grade, despite the Competition Commission's decision today to block Kangaroo, the joint VoD venture between BBC Worldwide, Channel 4 & ITV.

Lord Stephen Carter, Minister for Communications, Technology & Broadcasting, has called for universal broadband in the UK by 2012, and for ISPs to crackdown on online piracy in his Digital Britain Report.

Ofcom has released its second public service broadcasting (PSB) report, with Chief Executive Ed Richards acknowledging that “The UK needs new ways to sustain the spirit of public broadcasting”.

Channel 4 CEO Andy Burnham said today that a C4/Channel 5 partnership would be like “mixing oil with water”. Speaking at Nesta this morning, he gave his views on the government's forthcoming Digital Britain report, the future of Channel 4 and of UK media industry at large.

The detractors of ISP-based behavioural targeting (BT) technologies such as Phorm would like to turn the clock back to a “horse-drawn" internet, “seizing on BT as a convenient excuse”, for a return to an elitist web, according to i-level Founder Andrew Walmsley.

A groundbreaking settlement has been reached which, if approved by the court, would settle the long running class-action lawsuit brought against Google by representatives of publishers and authors.

Digital media is more important to the UK economy than ever, according to the newly appointed minister for communications, technology and broadcasting, Stephen Carter, especially in the light of the global financial crisis.

This week Comscore releases its latest Video Metrix research , showing 27 million UK consumers viewed more than 3 billion videos online in June, also brought Google's dominance of the online video market into sharp relief: with 49 per cent market share, its nearest competitor, with just 1 per cent in comparison.

Copyright seems to be constantly under attack these days - from law makers; by consumer perceptions that content, especially online, should be free; from libraries wanting to make their content available outside their premises; and from Google and other big search engines which make money out of other people's content.

The threat to Europe's creative industries from online copyright infringement featured heavily at a conference hosted by the Slovenian Presidency earlier this month.

Do you know which of the advertising you carry on your sites is covered by the UK Code of Advertising Practice (CAP)? You’d be surprised - quite a lot is. Straighforward banner ads and pop-ups, for example.

Behavioural targeting, cookies and online privacy are hot topics again at the EC. AOP has contacted MEPs to highlight the importance of targeted advertising to our industry, and to stress that robust data protection is in place.

AOP has submitted a response to the UK Intellectual Property Office consultation on changes to copyright in the digital age. Our detailed response is aimed at ensuring that publishers' businesses are not damaged by any changes.

Do your journalists attend large sporting or cultural events to report on them? Are you finding the terms of their access to these events increasingly restrictive? AOP has noted that reporter access to certain major sporting events seems to come with a number of increasingly onerous restrictions.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt has announced his support of the Automated Content Access Protocol (ACAP), an initiative providing publishers with more control over the use of their content online.

Ofcom has scrapped its idea for a Public Service Publisher (PSP). Chief executive Ed Richards stated that the idea had served its purpose by focusing attention on the importance of digital media in public sector broadcasting (PSB).

European Commission regulators have approved the Google/DoubleClick merger, as suggested previously in an FT report. The EC made its approval without any major concerns about the impact of the merger on users’ privacy.

The Automated Content Access Protocol (ACAP) aims to enable a “more sophisticated debate” with search engines. In a show of support for the project, AOP has ACAP-enabled its own site.

AOP board members BBC, Channel 4 and ITV have signed up to a new code of conduct covering consumer guidelines for web and mobile content. The guidelines were developed by advisory body the Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG), backed by Ofcom.