The Financial Times reports that Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom are working on a a peer-to-peer IPTV system. This will distribute video online in the same way that Skype distributes telephone calls. Six thousand users are already beta testing the service which is called the Venice Project.

The Skype founders intend working with content owners to distribute material over the system. Video data is encrypted and is high quality full motion. It may be a little early to launch a peer to peer tv system like this as broadband network speeds don’t yet have the capacity to run such a service at full strength, all of the time. But the world’s network capability is building quickly.