Skype Creators’ Revolutionary TV Project Begins Testing

The Venice Project, the new project from the makers of VOIP giant Skype that aims at distributing television and video over the internet, quietly launched its beta testing on Friday, inviting thousands of people to begin using the service to help its developers work out early bugs.

Although few details are known about how the Venice Project (see Skype Creators Develop New TV And Video Over Internet Project) actually works, they will become increasingly public as beta testers begin using it.

In a letter sent to prospective testers on Friday, Venice Project CEO Fredrik de Wahl said: “While we’re still in beta, we feel we have a strong proof of concept and we know that we’ll be able to count on you to help us uncover any bugs and glitches and provide recommendations, so that we can make The Venice Project ready for the whole world to enjoy.”

The Venice Projects blog indicates that the company plans to do something different from earlier incarnations of peer-to-peer file-sharing services, saying it will work only in a copyrighted framework, which should ease the anxiety of the major TV networks and studios.

One of Venice’s developers, Henrik Werdelin, wrote on the project’s blog. “All content on The Venice platform is provided by content owners directly, and it’s all protected with the highest standard of encryption and we are working within the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) framework to ensure that it complies with appropriate content protection and ownership regulations.”

The Venice Project: www.theveniceproject.com