Big plans are rumoured to be afoot for the BBC’s online plans. Only a week after the new iPlayer 2.0 was unveiled in beta testing, there are new proposals being talked about that could change the nature of the service completely.

The BBC iPlayer is already a fantastic service available to everyone in the UK, allowing viewers to stream or download any BBC programmes from the last seven days.

The improved version of the iPlayer is already a big step up, integrating radio and television in to the one service, a larger playback window, and an automatic bookmarking feature.

Pre-Booking Function On Way

One of the other features, allowing you to view programmes coming up in the next three days forms the basis for the first of the new improvements. In my article about the iPlayer 2.0, I suggested this would lead to bigger things, and that is now happening.

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Google has announced two improvements to its AdSense video units which should make it much easier to generate revenue from embedding YouTube video ads.

First of all, the company has partnered with various major content producers. These new partners will allow their content to be syndicated across the sites of publishers who are willing to display video ads on their sites, meaning you can now share in the ad revenue of these content providers.

New Partners & Video Units

According to the AdSense Blog, the content partners include Broadbandtv, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and The Orchard. Programming will include content ranging from fashion, celebrity news, sports, technology, comedy and travel.

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The RIAA and its many cronies have been on the warpath for a few years now, going after individuals and organisations alike who it considers to be abusing the rights of artists copyrighted music.

While uploading an official music video without the copyright holders consent is obviously going to get you in trouble, what happens when it is a user-generated video to accompany a copyrighted song?

Popular social network Hi5 is being sued by large music group EMI for alledgedly allowing users to upload video content with embedded copyrighted music.

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The Viacom lawsuit against YouTube has been going on for too long already, and the arguments from both sides of the copyrighted material divide are becoming laboured very quickly.

But up until now, the case was between two huge, and highly profitable companies, and wasn’t actually impinging on us, the normal consumers and viewers of video on the Web. That is now set to change after a judge made a ridiculous decision in Viacom’s favour.

Users IP Addresses & More

Viacom asked the judge presiding over the ongoing case to force YouTube to reveal data about users names and IP addresses, as well as complete histories of which videos they have watched AND copies of every video ever removed from the site for any reason.

The judge, in his infinite wisdom, granted the order, and YouTube now has to comply. Which means information about you and I, and our viewing habits, is going to be released to a company seeking to sue over copyright infringements. Which means we could be sued too for viewing anything other than clips of pets on treadmills and the like.

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The Roku Netflix box was released back in May to a mixture of complete and utter enthusiasm, to a feeling that it won’t ever be able to compete with Apple TV, so why bother.

The player launched at the incredibly low price of just $99, and allowed users to stream movies and television from Netflix to their TV using the Instant Viewing feature. It’s been a sales success, with the device already hard to come by.

However, demand for the boxes is likely to increase even more with the news that the box is going to soon be compatible with more content providers than just Netflix, and these are going to be high-profile names.

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The Internet is a strange place, with many nooks and crannies lurking in places many of us never visit. This is because the Web caters for almost every niche market out there. If it exists, it’s on the Web.

We all have our own interests, and it’s good that these interests are many and varied, but it also means it is sometimes hard to find like-minded people in your area to talk to about your passion.

The Internet has solved that at a stroke, and you can now be guaranteed of finding someone with a similar interest to you in one of those previously mentioned nooks and crannies.

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Way back in November last year, the BBC, ITV, and Channel 4 jointly announced their plans for an online video on demand venture strangely titled Kangaroo, with all three broadcasters taking an equal third share in the service.

Kangaroo is, or at least was meant to be launching in August of this year, but that launch may now be delayed quite substantially after having been referred to the Competition Commission by the Office of Fair Trading.

The OFT issued a statement yesterday concerning the decision to refer the plans to the Competition Commission, which according to The Telegraph has been done for a number of different reasons.

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