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Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the entrepreneurs who created the pioneering Web applications Kazaa and Skype, are working on a new communications venture.The pair plans to develop software for distributing TV shows and other forms of video over the Web, according to people familiar with the matter. Working under the code name "The Venice Project," Zennstrom and Friis have assembled teams of top software developers in about a half-dozen cities around the world, including New York, London, and Venice. The teams are currently in negotiations with TV networks, although it's not clear whether any agreements have been reached. A formal announcement of the new venture could come as early as this fall.The Venice Project may find willing partners in the TV business. While music and film executives resisted even the legal distribution of their goods over the Web, TV executives have been much more accepting of the concept. Perhaps they saw the ultimate futility of resistance. Although the music and film industries won several legal battles, they failed to stop the consumer embrace of digital distribution platforms such as Apple Computer's (AAPL) iTunes. And maybe several years of technological evolution have simply convinced the TV execs that an economically viable digital-distribution system is at hand.
