Viacom signs deal with Joost and sticks it to Google
Written on February 20, 2007 – 1:21 pm | by admin
Viacom Inc. and Joost have announced today a deal that will make it legal for the Internet startup to broadcast over the Internet content from MTV Networks, BET Networks and Paramount Pictures among others. This announcement comes only a couple of weeks after Viacom served Google’s YouTube with a copyright violation notice for over 100,000 videos requesting that the videos are removed immediately.
Joost is a new Web 2.0 company that is currently beta testing a TV service over the Internet using established P2P technology to serve video. Joost will move away from user generated content and focus on legally obtained commercial programs. Joost will be supported by advertising like traditional television.
Google seems to be the biggest loser in all this. First, they spent $1.65 billion to acquire YouTube and since then they had to deal with several legal issues over the copyrighted material stored on YouTube’s servers. Google’s hopes to sign big deals with TV networks in order to acquire the legal rights to their video have fallen through while competitors such as Joost are being successful.