Skype: A Rightsholders Nightmare In The Making

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Two weeks or so ago I posed a question to the newly minted SKYPE USA GM, Henry Gomez, about the issues of adult content and licensed content going over the Skype pipe when Video was announced.

One of my questions centered around the ability for Skype to be a multicast streaming pipe. Now Gomez, who is very bright, seemed to not see this as an issue that mattered to Skype, but he was just on the job.

But, you see, I’ve been in the streaming media world longer than I’ve been in the VoIP world (circa 1997) so the issues and the potential of using Skype as a pipe don’t fall far from the tree.

So when I saw this post via Stuart at Skype Journal I said “oh, my God.”

Basically when you add in encryption that Skype already has it becomes impossible to know what’s going through the pipe. That means someone in London could in effect Skypecast English Premiere League Football to an ex-pat in the USA. Vice versa someone here in the USA could Skypecast NBA basketball, which has rights deals in other parts of the world, virtually anywhere.

For Hollywood this is akin to Kazaa or LimeWire in many ways. But much worse. First Skype makes things easy. Like a Mac almost. So with TV shows seen at least one year behind in foreign markets the Skypecasting market could blow holes in that approach very quickly. Given the growth of broadband around the world Skype could become the illegal distribution pipe with a technology like the one described by Stuart, or someone else’s. Now with Video and codecs geared for it already resident in Skype, the issue is no longer if, but when.

6 thoughts on “Skype: A Rightsholders Nightmare In The Making”

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    Vice versa someone here in the USA could Skypecast NBA basketball, which has rights deals in oth…

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