Venice Project the next Skype

The founders of Kazaa and Skype have now annouced the Venice Project (named after a film of the same name). This will utilise a secure P2P network to distribute film type content. All content is copy protected. Users will need to download a client that makes the content available in a secure manner, and content suppliers will be provided with tools to upload content.

All content will allow for de-authorisation which means it becomes unavailable for viewing.

As the content is uploaded it is "atomised" like in the BitTorrent protocol and then split across multiple P2P sites.

The client then accesses the small chunks and downloads them, however to the user it appears as if the content is streamed.

They seem to have made agreements with various Hollywood studios and it may actually come to something.

Opinion seems to be that it may conflict with their work at Ebay (who purchased Skype), but it seems a perfect application to marry with PayPal (also owned by Ebay) so users can pay for the content.