Joost, a company attempting to broadcast TV via the Internet, said on Tuesday it had signed several new content distribution agreements, including one with Turner Broadcasting System Inc to show CNN news and interview programs.
The company also announced its "commercial availability" -- meaning it will allow current users to invite anyone to use its free service.
"Later this month we will be completely open" and allow anyone to download the Joost software from the company's Web site, said Yvette Alberdingk Thijm, the company's top executive for content acquisition, in a telephone interview.
"This is the way you normally ramp up peer-to-peer software ... and it's a way to give our friends a little bit of a scoop," she said.
P2P
Joost -- pronounced ``juiced'' -- was co-founded by Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, the entrepreneurs who upset the music industry with the Kazaa file-sharing service and then developed Skype, the Internet telephone system that was bought by eBay Inc for at least US$2.6 billion in 2005.
Joost operates by distributing streaming video of shows from "peer-to-peer," or user-to-user, over the Internet. Consumers choose a channel via a software interface on their desktop that resembles a remote control.
Like regular TV, it is free for viewers, and aims to be ad-supported.
It is seen as one of the many candidates to become a primary distributor of TV and video over the Internet, competing against Google Inc, YouTube, Revver Inc, broadcasters' own Web sites, an as-yet unnamed cooperation between NBC and NewsCorp, and file-sharing programs such as BitTorrent, among others.
copyrights
Joost's Viacom deal was particularly noteworthy as it came close on the heels of Viacom's lawsuit against Google for alleged copyright infringement.
In contrast to Kazaa, Joost actively seeks deals with copyright holders and promises to protect music and images on its platform against piracy.
"This is a mode of distribution that Viacom is more comfortable with," said Loeb & Loeb attorney Ken Florin, who was not involved in Tuesday's deal.
"Internet ad revenue could become a very effective way to monetize maybe not the same content, but content that appeals to a different audience," specifically the male 18 to 34 category.
advertisement
Alberdingk Thijm said the company is still experimenting with when and how it will run advertisements -- including short advertisements before or after programs, traditional 30-second advertisements in the middle of longer programs, and more experimental ideas such as ads that appear on the screen briefly and then fade away while a program is running.
Overall, she said, there would be less advertising than on regular TV.
Taiwan’s Lee Chia-hao (李佳豪) on Sunday won a silver medal at the All England Open Badminton Championships in Birmingham, England, a career best. Lee, 25, took silver in the final of the men’s singles against world No. 1 Shi Yuqi (石宇奇) of China, who won 21-17, 21-19 in a tough match that lasted 51 minutes. After the match, the Taiwanese player, who ranks No. 22 in the world, said it felt unreal to be challenging an opponent of Shi’s caliber. “I had to be in peak form, and constantly switch my rhythm and tactics in order to score points effectively,” he said. Lee got
EMBRACING TAIWAN: US lawmakers have introduced an act aiming to replace the use of ‘Chinese Taipei’ with ‘Taiwan’ across all Washington’s federal agencies A group of US House of Representatives lawmakers has introduced legislation to replace the term “Chinese Taipei” with “Taiwan” across all federal agencies. US Representative Byron Donalds announced the introduction of the “America supports Taiwan act,” which would mandate federal agencies adopt “Taiwan” in place of “Chinese Taipei,” a news release on his page on the US House of Representatives’ Web site said. US representatives Mike Collins, Barry Moore and Tom Tiffany are cosponsors of the legislation, US political newspaper The Hill reported yesterday. “The legislation is a push to normalize the position of Taiwan as an autonomous country, although the official US
CHANGE OF TONE: G7 foreign ministers dropped past reassurances that there is no change in the position of the G7 members on Taiwan, including ‘one China’ policies G7 foreign ministers on Friday took a tough stance on China, stepping up their language on Taiwan and omitting some conciliatory references from past statements, including to “one China” policies. A statement by ministers meeting in Canada mirrored last month’s Japan-US statement in condemning “coercion” toward Taiwan. Compared with a G7 foreign ministers’ statement in November last year, the statement added members’ concerns over China’s nuclear buildup, although it omitted references to their concerns about Beijing’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong. Also missing were references stressing the desire for “constructive and stable relations with China” and
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday said it has lodged a protest with Pretoria after the name of the Taipei Liaison Office in South Africa was changed to the “Taipei Commercial Office” on the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation’s (DIRCO) Web site. In October last year, the South African government asked Taiwan to relocate the Taipei Liaison Office, the nation’s de facto embassy, out of Pretoria. It later agreed to continue negotiating through official channels, but in January asked that the office be relocated by the end of this month. As of the middle of last month, DIRCO’s Web
RSS