A coalition made up of media companies Walt Disney Co., Viacom Inc., CBS Corp., NBC Universal and News Corp.; and Internet companies Microsoft Corp., MySpace, Veoh Networks and Dailymotion have released a set of guidelines for handling copyright-protected videos on large user-generated sites such as YouTube or MySpace.

For Internet companies, the agreement means that they will not be sued if any copyrighted material sneaks past their best efforts to block it. "These principles offer a road map for unlocking the enormous potential of online video and user-generated content," said Bob Iger, chief executive of Disney.

The announcement came just a couple of days after Google has introduced a long-promised video filtering system for its YouTube website. The system is designed to help owners of copyrighted videos crack down on pirated versions distributed over the video-sharing site.

However, Google did not join in the coalition yet, but most analysts believe it will have to in the near future. Last March, Viacom, which owns MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central, sued Google, which owns YouTube, for massive copyright infringement and demanded 1 billion dollars in damages. Viacom President/CEO Phillipe Dauman said at Web 2.0 in San Francisco that Google doesn't seem to want to do things quickly when it comes to blocking copyrighted content, but it's rather dragging its feet. Dauman suggested the company's muscle could have translated in a much quicker and efficient implementation of a copyright enforcement system.

"Google is a very high-quality company with a lot of very smart people. They can do things when they want to. They haven't wanted to until this point," Dauman said.

Jeff Zucker, president and chief executive of NBC Universal, said: "[This] announcement marks a significant step in transforming the internet from a Wild West to a popular medium that respects the rule of law. By recognising the mutual benefits of a technology-based framework to control piracy, technology and content companies have laid the foundation for the lawful growth of video on the internet."

The guidelines, arranged neatly in 15 articles, emphasize high-tech filtering, quick removal of pirated content, and promotion of infringement-free digital content. They can be viewed publicly at www.ugcprinciples.com
Dauman also said that he believes in fragmentation, i.e. that content should not be concentrated on a single site or just a handful of sites. He also announced plans to put 13,000 clips from its archive of The Daily Show on the Web.