Venice Project Aims For TV/Web Convergence 34
PreacherTom writes, "The founders of Skype, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, are offering a sneak peak into their newest venture, The Venice Project, a video site that combines professionally produced TV and user-submitted videos with the interactive tools of Web 2.0. So, what will Venice offer to combat YouTube's dominance? Streaming video with DVD-like controls, on-screen menus of preset channels, and interactive tools to share video playlists are only the beginning. Venice's Beta will be expanded by the middle of November, with general release by New Year's Day." The article notes that "Venice" is a placeholder name and that the project will launch with new branding.
Eben Moglen Quote (Score:4, Insightful)
"You don't know what the world you're living in is going to be like but you can guess some things about it: there will be no music companies in it."
*also, with any luck, no -- or fewer -- TV companies
"Now if you leave them alone to buy more congressmen, in this very corrupt time of ours, they will survive for a little while longer but all of this talk is about the technicalities of the adjustment of the terms of their demise. When we want to start talking about something that matters, we would do better to begin from some basic social propositions. Everybody is connected to everybody else, all data that can be shared will be shared: get used to it."
http://ciaran.compsoc.com/texts/eben-moglen-dmca-
Venice offers.. (Score:3, Insightful)
So, Venice will offer nothing that YouTube doesn't already offer then? It'll be all fancy with Web 2.0 controls though. Big deal. The interface is of little consequence, and arguably Venice will fall flat with their Web 2.0 gimmickery because you'll not be able to embed it in a MySpace profile like you can with Flash. The challenge to overcome with a video content site is
good stuff, Phantom (Score:3, Insightful)
"The Venice Project is designed to work within the intellectual property rights system, not against it"
"users don't download video files. The videos are streamed to their computers instead. The encoded bits of data that make up shows stream past the viewer's eyes and disappear. They don't become permanent files on the viewer's computer."
As per my Moglen quote above, this approach is doomed. Not this year, probably not next year, but there you go.