Peer to Peer TV

Imagine a world where you could pick and choose from thousands of movies and TV show for free. Well you don’t need to imagine it because BitTorrent already makes it possible, but what if this practice was legal?

The team that bought us Kazaa and then Skype are working on a brand new project that may well answer this question. Using the same technology that powers Skype and Kazaa they have found a method of distributing video over the web.

Business Week reports:

“Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the entrepreneurs who created the pioneering Web applications Kazaa and Skype, are working on a new communications venture…The pair plans to develop software for distributing TV shows and other forms of video over the Web, according to people familiar with the matter.

“Working under the code name “The Venice Project,” Zennstrom and Friis have assembled teams of top software developers in about a half-dozen cities around the world, including New York, London, and Venice. The teams are currently in negotiations with TV networks, although it’s not clear whether any agreements have been reached. A formal announcement of the new venture could come as early as this fall.”

If Zennstrom and Friis manage to pull this off they will have an incredibly strong proposition and threaten the survival of traditional broadcast TV.