Viacom Charts New Course Online at the Wall Street Journal reports that Viacom announced “broad licensing deal with Joost.” Joost is like YouTube but they specialize in commercial video. The deal allows Joost to include “hundreds of hours of programming from Viacom cable networks such as MTV, Comedy Central and Spike as well as movies made by the company’s Paramount studios” for their users.

Viacom’s Chief Executive, Philippe Dauman, said they are interesting in allowing web based access to their content “provided we can operate in a secure environment.” Joost will enable that, putting pressure on YouTube to secure deals with other major video content providers. There are some more details at Techcrunch.

Related Topics: Google: YouTube & Video | Legal: Copyright | Search Engines: Video Search Engines

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz