Some of the biggest names in media and the Web are joining up to announce a set of guidelines designed to protect copyrights. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, the guidelines will state that Web sites should block infringing content before it is made public. In other words, rather than placing the burden on the copyright holder to inform the Web site of infringing materials, the Web site would be responsible for making sure the content never gets posted in the first place.
The companies involved in the pact include CBS Corp., Dailymotion, Microsoft Corp., NBC Universal, News Corp.'s Fox and MySpace units, Viacom Inc. and Walt Disney Co. Google, who earlier this week launched its own copyright filtering tools for YouTube, is conspicuously missing from the list.