Viacom, Joost enter Internet TV deal

Joost, the online TV service developed by the founders of Internet telephone company Skype Ltd., has struck a licensing deal with Viacom International Inc.

Nancy Gohring

Joost, the online TV service developed by the founders of Internet telephone company Skype Ltd., has struck a licensing deal with Viacom International Inc.

A spokeswoman for Joost's public relations firm confirmed the deal and said additional details would become available on Tuesday.

The deal should help Joost coexist peacefully with content producers rather than operating at odds with them.

YouTube Inc., the popular online video sharing site that Google Inc. bought last year, continues to run afoul of content owners that are unhappy to see their copyright content displayed on YouTube without proper licensing.

In early February, Viacom asked YouTube to remove over 100,000 clips from the site. In a statement, the media giant said that it had become clear that YouTube was unwilling to come to a fair agreement to make Viacom content available on YouTube. Viacom also blamed YouTube's inability to deliver filtering tools that would prevent unauthorized content from appearing on the site.

In addition, Viacom complained at the time that Google and YouTube were retaining all the revenue generated from presenting content without sharing it with the people who created it.

Joost, formerly known as The Venice Project, continues to accept beta users. The service allows customers to watch television programs on their computers. Rather than streaming the content from a central server farm, Joost works in a peer-to-peer fashion, with users serving as a network that shares content among users.