Video sharing site Bolt has officially shuttered, after a deal to be acquired by GoFish unraveled two weeks ago. The original deal, which had GoFish buying Bolt for up to $30 million in stock, called for Bolt to settle a copyright infringement suit brought by Universal Music Group. When the Universal settlement fell through, so did the GoFish acquisition.

YouTube has argued for a while now that exposure on the video-sharing site helps TV networks far more than it hurts them. The company also made clear it intends to offer that argument in court, as it defends itself on copyright infringement charges brought by Viacom.

Today the Online Publishers Association issued a new study attempting to quantify people's changing online media habits. The group reports that people now devote more online hours to content than e-mail or other communications, marking a reversal from just four years ago.

Google News has started soliciting feedback from people mentioned in articles that appear in the mainstream media.

The influential advocacy group Center for Democracy & Technology is calling for new legislation to force search engines to protect users' privacy. "Unfortunately, industry self-regulation by itself will never provide strong enough privacy safeguards," the CDT states in its new report, "Search Privacy Practices: A Work in Progress."

The New York Times plans to scrap its two-year-old TimesSelect subscription service and once again make all of the newspaper's columns available for free online, according to a report in today's New York Post.

Vodafone, Prudential and the British government's Central Office of Information are among the six marketers who just pulled all ads from social networking site Facebook after realizing that they appeared next to content by the right-wing extremist group British Nationalist Party.

A new twist in the Viacom-YouTube lawsuit came out in a New York federal court this morning.

Following closely in Sony's footsteps, NewsCorp's MySpace plans to scout for new video talent online.

Almost one in five online adults, or 19%, now watch Web video on a typical day, while 57% have viewed online video at least once. That's according to new research by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.