Skype founders behind IPTV venture?

The creators of internet telephony champion Skype are believed to be behind an IPTV project based on the same peer to peer technology that has brought them success since the days of Kazaa.

Rumour has it that Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom have used some of their proceeds from the $2.6bn sale of Skype to eBay last year to fund an internet TV venture known as the Venice Project.

The Venice Project, which has a web site up here, went into beta phase last month “to get the tires kicked by many thousands of people”. There is no information on the Venice Project website linking the venture to Skype, save that the domain is registered in the Netherlands, the original home of Kazaa, Skype and of course, Friis and Zennstrom.

In its won words, the Venice Project is a “secure P2P streaming technology that allows content owners to bring TV-quality video and ease of use to a TV-sized audience mixed with all the wonders of the internet.” All the content on The Venice platform is to be provided by content owners directly and will all be protected by commercial level encryption, which complies with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) framework.

It is understood the service will be supported by advertising and may even include a pay per view element.