Joost takes the moral high ground on content deals

Viacom MTV, Comedy Central, VH1 ...quality content....

The two internet entrepreneurs Frijs and Zennstrom say their rebel and lawsuit-tinged past led to their ethical content policy at Joost IPTV.

Joost recently partnered with New York-based Viacom and French based i-concerts, both organisations that respect the artists rights, and are exploiting the new and emerging digital distribution platforms on their behalf.

The founders of Joost, Friis' and Zennstrom's former Internet company, the file-sharing service, Kazaa, pushed legal boundaries and resulted in the music and movie industries aggressively suing the company. Selling Kazaa didn't end troubles for Friis, a Dane, and Zennstrom, a Swede, who didn't enter the United States for years because of the lawsuits filed against them.
In November, Kazaa's new owners settled the last of the suits agreeing to pay at least $125 million to the record industry and movie studios.

i-concerts - up to 20 hours of fresh programing

Joost has reached agreements to download programs from Viacom networks such as MTV, Comedy Central and VH1. While the deal's terms were not disclosed, Viacom and Joost will share advertising revenue. Zennstrom said to the New York Times:

"The reason we're doing this is because of our history," Janus Friis told The New York Times. "We know how these things work. And above all, we know that we don't want to be in a long, multiyear litigation battle."

Further reading:
Viacom
Playfuls
NY Times