Kazaa creators Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis are no strangers to lawsuits. Since 1999, the two have been embroiled in infringement lawsuits with record companies and movie studios. Neither men set foot in America until recently, when all their legal battles came to an end in November after they agreed to pay $125 million to their opponents.
Zennstrom and Friis sold their other "free-service" company, Skype, to eBay in 2005 but still work closely with them as executive chief and executive vice president for innovation, respectively. But in the meantime, they have developed their new endeavor, a Web video venture called Joost.
Analysts and the creators themselves do not see the popular YouTube as competition. Joost, which streams full length programs in a full screen format, is predicted to be competition for cable companies. Frii's explains that Joost is "not Web video; it's TV."
Last month, Viacom ordered Google's YouTube to remove over 100,000 of its videos from the video-sharing site while inking a deal with Joost. While the agreement is undisclosed, Joost and Viacom will share advertising revenue from the programs the former will stream on the Internet.
Will the Kazaa guys find success in a legitimate Internet venture after so much success in "free service?" It looks like they will. Having full length content from former YouTube powerhouse The Daily Show with Jon Stewart along with all the other content provided by Viacom will give Joost a large fan base. This could change the way people watch television on the Internet. As long as the quality is high and the advertising does not become as burdensome as cable television, network television and radio advertising is to us now, Joost may fill the void that YouTube has left since it was bought by Google and "legitimized."
Don't worry, I believe YouTube will still be our #1 source for watching a college student dumping his cheating girlfriend in front of 3,000 spectators. Thank goodness we can always count on that.
Peters, Jeremy W. "Kazaa's Creators Do Latest Venture by the Book." New York Times. 27 Feb 2007.
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