Joost up!

After a conversation last Comic Book Day (aka Wednesday for those not of the four color persuasion) with the Kung Fu Monkey, I decided to sign up for Joost. I am a forward thinking guy (despite my fascination with the pulps and serials and art deco, etc...ad infinitum), and the way John said, "Have you signed up for Joost yet?" made me a bit nervous...like I was going to really miss out on something significant.

You don't have to punch me twice so I applied.

The line however is really long to complete applications and the fine folks at Joost suggest I put the word out to those early adopters who signed up already to send me an invite. Consider this my plea for a Beta test invite. Please forward it to my email address in my profile.

This also dovetails into conversations Alex is having over at Complications Ensue regarding downloading content.

My personal view is with downloaders. Why? Well it's not because I think the evil corporations who own the copyrights to the movies or television or whatever don't have a right to make money... I download because I want them to make money.

There was a Harvard Business School study that was done several years ago about the music downloading "crisis" (as they called it) and the study found that downloading actually helped increase business for the people who owned the songs. People download singles and episodes all the time, and for the most part...

Those that really like the show go out and buy the DVD or CD.

They found this was especially true when there was special "added value" on the DVD set which was unavailable anywhere else. This flies in the face of the so-called "conventional wisdom" that the music industry operated under to their detriment. (we even have people in the film and tv industry who - to this very day despite the hard evidence - say that downloaders rob people of their royalties). People have wised up. They want to be able to catch up on programs if they need to - via their Tivo or via bit torrent.

Nowadays we even have Steven Jobs out there saying that there should be no more "Digital Rights Management" (DRM) encoding software involved with downloading. People should be able to get their content the way they want - in an open source environment. Why?

Well for one, it exposes more people to different sorts of programming that they can watch in the format they want - iPod, player, PC, Mac, PSP or DVR.

Secondly, it makes them money.

Joost takes these ideas and puts them in a medium / format where everyone has access and everyone makes money at it. The software will be free and you will be able to watch what you want, when you want it and with advertising to pay for it all.

It's like television for your computer, ipod or PSP.

It's the future.

(Over there... in that direction... No, I will not hold your hand.)