P2P TV on the way
Tuesday, December 19th, 2006
Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom have invested part of their $2.6bn Skype sale windfall in developing a broadband P2P TV service to rival the broadcast networks.
The Venice Project, as it is called, claims to deliver near high-definition quality programmes supported by advertisers with tools for users to personalise channels, discuss programmes with others and do things like pause, record, rewind, etc.
Mr Friss said peer to peer technology used buy the service would make it poissibls to serve “tens of millions of users” while overcoming the content owners’ security concerns. Frederik de Wahl said programmes would not require DRM protection because “the bits and bytes being collected on your computer are fragments of the stream”.
For me this underlines the fact that DRM and content producers themselves have to move on an embrace new business models. Its no longer viable for them to try to tehcnically or legislatively block distribution of their content (its a losing battle). Instead they need to find new ways to allow this redistribution WHILE ensuring they get paid.
Also they say they are behaving within the bounds of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (see this), but that is exactly the piece of legislation that companies like Napster tried to use in their (failed) defense, particularly the “safe harbour provision” which says that they are just the ‘dumb carrier’ (my words) of the data traffic and not the one doing any bad.
