Earlier this month, the entertainment giant Viacom demanded that Google-owned YouTube remove over 100,000 potentially infringing videos. The demand was seen as the last straw between the two companies, as efforts to construct a deal that would allow YouTube to legally publish Viacom’s intellectual property vanished. In fact, Viacom had less than pleasant words for Google’s investment following the demand.

"After months of ongoing discussions with YouTube and Google, it has become clear that YouTube is unwilling to come to a fair market agreement that would make Viacom content available to YouTube users," Viacom said in a statement. "Filtering tools promised repeatedly by YouTube and Google have not been put in place, and they continue to host and stream vast amounts of unauthorized video."

Further aggravating Viacom is YouTube’s alleged practice of embedding and placing advertisements in and around Viacom-owned videos. Such videos include popular clips from shows such as MTV, Comedy Central, BET, and VH1. As many already know, Viacom has in the past demanded that shows such as “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” be removed.

So it appears that Viacom is in a quandary. They want to distribute their work online, however don’t want to see it hosted in an unprotected environment. It appeared for a while that YouTube may have become that sought after environment, however piracy concerns eventually destroyed any hope for a deal. Yet this doesn’t mean Viacom has given up on the online venture.

In an apparent slap in the face to YouTube, Viacom has announced a partnership with authorized distributor “Joost.” If you’re not familiar with the name or the concept, you may be familiar with the founders – none other than Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström. Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström are the brains behind the FastTrack network, known colloquially as Kazaa. They are also the founders and developers of Skype, the free VoIP P2P network.

Much like FastTrack and Skype, Joost is a P2P network. Like many of the up and coming online video sites, Joost will act like an online TV set. People will be able to flip through channels and near-instantly acquire streaming videos. However there is a centralized portion of the network that acts as the initial distribution point. Once the video has been distributed to a wide enough audience, the P2P portion of the technology takes over to ensure quick acquisition. With P2P assisted technology, this could serve the public better than a totally centralized application such as YouTube. The service is touted as secure and virtually impervious to would-be pirates.