IP Democracy: Viacom to YouTube: We're Going with Joost

In a move widely interpreted to be a giant obscene gesture aimed at Google and YouTube, Viacom has entered into a web video distribution pact with Joost, the start-up launched by Skype co-founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. Under the agreement, Viacom’s MTV Networks, BET Networks and Paramount Pictures will provide entire TV shows and movies via the Joost platform.

Joost hopes to provide “broadcast quality” video services over the Internet and has, until now, struggled to gain access to high-caliber TV content. Unlike Google, which has frustrated top program providers with its seeming insensitivity to the content protection concerns held by Hollywood and TV programming networks, Joost has positioned itself as a “piracy-proof” Internet platform that guarantees copyright protections for rights holders.

Viacom plans to offer full-length TV shows from a variety of its MTV Networks’ channels. Among the programs that will be available on Joost’s platform are Laguna Beach, Beavis & Butthead, Real World, Punk’d and My Super Sweet Sixteen from MTV and Stella, CCP’s and Freak Show from Comedy Central. Nickelodeon, CMT: Country Music Television, MTV2, Logo, Spike TV, mtvU, and Gametrailers.com will also provide content. VH1 will contribute episodes of Flavor of Love, Surreal Life, and I Love New York. BET’s Networks’ offerings will include Beef, DMX: Soul of a Man, Comic View and American Gangster. Most interesting of all, Paramount Pictures, Paramount Vantage and Paramount Classics will provide full-length feature films from its catalog of classics and recent releases.

There can be no doubt that this is a humbling piece of news to the Googlers who have managed to tick off most of the traditional media businesses with their purported hard-ball negotiations. Google, it is said, lobbed a veiled threat to Viacom (and other TV content providers) that it would not use its content protection system for filtering copyrighted video on YouTube works unless it had a deal in hand with the content provider.

Whatever the case may be, Google and YouTube, heretofore unstoppable Internet forces, have entered the big leagues — they’ve been thrown a knuckle ball by a major Hollywood studio and TV programming provider.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on February 20, 2007 12:18 PM to IP Democracy