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Section 368A: Meaning of "on-demand programme service"

Communications Act 2003 · 2003 c. 21View on legislation.gov.uk

Part 4A: ON-DEMAND PROGRAMME SERVICES — Chapter 1: Introductory Provisions

For the purposes of this Act, a service (or a dissociable section of a service) is an "on-demand programme service" if—

its principal purpose is the provision of programmes (as described in section 368ZA);
access to it is on-demand;
there is a person who has editorial responsibility for it;
it is made available by that person for use by members of the public; ...
that person's head office is in the United Kingdom, and
editorial decisions about the service are taken in the United Kingdom.

Access to a service (or dissociable section of a service) is on-demand if—

the service (or dissociable section of the service) enables the user to view, at a time chosen by the user, programmes selected by the user from among the programmes included in the service (or dissociable section of the service); and
the programmes viewed by the user are received by the user by means of an electronic communications network (whether before or after the user has selected which programmes to view).

For the purposes of subsection (2)(a), the fact that a programme may be viewed only within a period specified by the provider of the service (or dissociable section of the service) does not prevent the time at which it is viewed being one chosen by the user.

A person has editorial responsibility for a service (or dissociable section of a service) if that person has general control—

over what programmes are included in the range of programmes offered to users; and
over the manner in which the programmes are organised in that range;

and the person need not have control of the content of individual programmes or of the broadcasting or distribution of the service (or dissociable section of the service) (and see section 368R(6)).

If an on-demand programme service ("the main service") offers users access to a relevant ancillary service, the relevant ancillary service is to be treated for the purposes of this Part as a part of the main service.

In subsection (5), "relevant ancillary service" means a service or facility that consists of or gives access to assistance for disabled people in relation to some or all of the programmes included in the main service.

In this section "assistance for disabled people" has the same meaning as in Part 3.

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This legislation text comes from legislation.gov.uk. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. These source and reuse terms cover the legislation text, not Remedy's commentary.

Reuse reviewed 21 August 2026 under Open Government Licence v3.0.