Viacom brings movies, shows to Joost
updated 02:30 pm EST, Tue February 20, 2007
Viacom on Joost
Viacom today announced a breakthrough deal for Joost, the peer-to-peer TV service developed by the team responsible for Kazaa and Skype. The new development will see some of Viacom's better-known videos make their way to the currently free Internet service, including shows from BET and MTV as well as complete movies from Paramount. The deal was made possible by the inherent nature of the system, which is ad-supported and stores no permanent copies on a viewer's drive. The terms of the deal weren't revealed by either company, but the transaction is just one of multiple high-profile contracts coming in the next few weeks, a Joost spokesman said. The deal is the first Viacom has reached for freely available videos on the Internet since the firm failed to land a deal with YouTube and subsequently had over 100,000 copyrighted clips pulled from the website.
Joost is currently running an invitation-only beta which began in January for Windows users and should be complete later this year. A Mac version of the beta appeared on Sunday.
