Google and Microsoft Bing are two of the largest search engines of the web. Under the "code of practice" in an agreement that was made on February 20th, 2017, the two search engines have agreed to remove links to infringing content from their results pages.
As a start, Google and Microsoft are demoting UK copyright infringing websites from their search results.
Search engines, especially Google, have had troubles with organizations that represent rights holders about how best to tackle pirated content. Google's property such as YouTube, has also been targeted by the music industry for hosting copyrighted contents.
"Consumers are increasingly heading online for music, films, e-books, and a wide variety of other content," said UK minister of state for universities, science, research and innovation, Jo Johnson.
"It is essential that they are presented with links to legitimate websites and services, not provided with links to pirate sites."
The agreement is called "Voluntary Code of Practice" and is seen as the first of its kind. With it, people using either Google or Bing to search for contents such as music videos, e-books or other contents that are protected by copyright, will likely be taken to legitimate websites, rather than to pirate websites.
In early February, the government had again threatened the legislation if search engines do not come up with a working code.
The discussion to create the code, was led by The Intellectual Property Office with the assistance of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Communications watchdog Ofcom supported the discussion by exploring methods that could be used to prevent internet users from coming across illegal content.
The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) that represents UK's recorded music industry, and the Motion Picture Association are also part of the agreement.
Both Bing and Google are cooperative in conducting the code, the first tangible result from six years of government-backed discussions.
The two are already allowing copyright owners across the globe to make a request for the removal of a link. In the past 12 months, Google has taken down 915 million links following requests from copyright holders. Bing on the other hand processed 91 million links between January and June 2016.
BPI itself has sent over 450 million infringement notices to both Google and Bing since 2011.