In a rare cross-industry accord, a consortium of media and Internet companies led by Walt Disney Co. and Microsoft Corp. have agreed to a set of rules they will abide by in the contentious area of posting copyright material on the Web.
Disney and Microsoft, which have been negotiating a pact for the past nine months, have pulled together a group that also includes General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal, Viacom Inc., CBS Corp., News Corp.'s Fox and MySpace units, Veoh Networks Inc. and Dailymotion SA. Notably absent is Google Inc., which had been in discussions about possibly joining the group.
The copyright holders in the group have agreed not to pursue Internet companies for infringement claims if their sites adhere to certain principles. Those principles include eliminating copyright-infringing content uploaded by users to Web sites, and blocking any infringing material before it is publicly accessible.
The pact is unusual in the number of companies involved, but the agreement isn't legally binding. It is more of a sign of trust-building among the companies, according to people familiar with the pact.
The companies have acknowledged the technology that exists today to block copyright-infringing material isn't perfect. Therefore, the pact's principles require that the companies simply make their best effort.
The boom in user posting of content -- particularly video -- to the Web has pitted the media companies, determined to protect their content, against technology and Internet companies, which feel they are protected from liability if they follow procedures outlined by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
In March, Viacom sued Google, alleging willful copyright infringement by Google's YouTube unit and claiming more than $1 billion in damages. Google has said it complies with U.S. law by removing any copyright-infringing video clips when requested by the content owners.
"We appreciate ideas from the various media companies on effective content identification technologies," said YouTube in a statement responding to the announcement of the principles. "We're glad that they recognize the need to cooperate on these issues, and we'll keep working with them to refine our industry-leading tools."
The people familiar with the pact didn't rule out the possibility that Google could return to the negotiating table, although the company pre-empted yesterday's announcement with its own earlier this week. Google Monday unveiled technology it has been testing to automate the identification of copyright material on its YouTube video-sharing service. It said the technology can't yet prevent infringing content from being posted initially, though it can pull flagged content off the site "in a matter of a few minutes."
The Disney/Microsoft group also is talking to other companies that may later join the pact, people familiar with the matter said.
Write to Merissa Marr at merissa.marr@wsj.com and Kevin J. Delaney at kevin.delaney@wsj.com
