• by Wayne Friedman , February 21, 2007

Move over, YouTube. Positioning itself as the next wave of TV digital distribution, Joost-the high-quality Internet TV service--has made its first content deal with Viacom for all its content divisions.

Joost, founded by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the creators of Kazaa and Skype, based those digital businesses--music distribution and telephone communications, respectively--on peer-to-peer technology.

Under the agreement, Viacom's divisions--MTV Networks, BET Networks and Paramount Pictures--will provide television and theatrical programming to Joost.

Joost is still in beta testing, but expects to roll out this June.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. But executives guess Viacom would be looking for some sort of licensing fee arrangement, which could also include a piece of any advertising revenue.

Joost claims to be the first online, high-quality TV distribution platform. More importantly, unlike other Internet businesses that have piracy and copyright issues, Joost claims to be totally secure and eager to make deals with content providers before bringing its product to market.

That wasn't the case for Joost's founders. When starting up Kazaa, the digital peer-to-peer music service got in trouble with music companies over copyright issues.

The Viacom-Joost deal is sort of an about-face for Viacom with high-profile Internet businesses. It broke off negotiations for a deal with YouTube recently--demanding that the user-generated content site remove copyrighted Viacom material that has shown up illegally from its users.