Automated Content Access Protocol

Automated Content Access Protocol ("ACAP") is an open communication protocol, developed by the publishing industries (World Association of Newspapers, European Publishers Council, International Publishers Association), designed to ensure that anyone who publishes content on the web can communicate the terms and conditions of access and re-use of their content at machine-to-machine level – allowing technology to manage permissions, particularly in business-to-business transactions. The initial focus of the project has been on the relationship between publishers and those online aggregators, particularly the search engines, which use automated techniques – technology often known as “crawlers” or “spiders” – to harvest (that is, to copy) enormous quantities of content without permission.

Until now, the terms and conditions adopted by publishers for the re-use of their copyrights have typically been formal legal documents, buried deeply somewhere on their websites. Very few people read them – and the software agents that crawl a site certainly cannot read them, rendering them of very limited value in terms of managing permissions.

ACAP translates these legal documents into a machine-readable, machine-interpretable language. The rightsholder decides on the terms and conditions that will apply to their content and uses ACAP as the communications tool to express them.

ACAP’s stated purpose is to put content owners back in control of their online content in a way that facilitates the development of new online business models, putting more content on the net, maximizing the benefits of the relationship with search engines and other aggregators – and ultimately ensuring the availability of a huge diversity of high quality content for consumers. http://www.the-acap.org/Home.aspx

Devised by publishers working in collaboration with search engines after a year-long pilot in 2006-2007, according to its developers ACAP is expected – when it achieves widespread adoption -- to revolutionise the creation, dissemination, use and protection of content on the worldwide web. One of the key objectives of ACAP is is said to be “to enable content providers to be able to make more content available to users through the search engines, and to continue to innovate and invest in the development of content.” Its supporters contend that, whilst search delivers up impressive readership figures, the revenue does not follow but is diverted to Google and other aggregators who are copying, using and monetising copyrighted online content without permission.

ACAP’s scope is now being extended to other business relationships and other media types including music and the audiovisual sectors.http://www.the-acap.org/Home.aspx

Current status

Technical work is about to start on an updated version of ACAP. 800 sites including the Wall Street Journal, Times Online, The Independent, Neue Zurcher Zeitung, De Morgen, Politiken, Ilta Sanomat, Expresso, Pan MacMillan, Penguin and many more household names in 43 countries worldwide have now implemented ACAP (www.the-acap.org/Documents.aspx)

Google claims that there are technical barriers to ACAP implementation but has never publicly clarified what these may be. The ACAP team has always stressed that ACAP is all about the solution it provides and not what it looks like technically. www.the-acap.org/Press.aspx "Online Publishing Debate"; http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/mar/16/google-news-adverts-agencies

Previous milestones

March’09 ACAP cited in UK’s Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property (SABIP) report as possible solution to online copyright. http://www.sabip.org.uk/

February’09 800 sites in 43 countries worldwide now ACAP-enabled. Regularly updated list can be found at http://www.the-acap.org/Implement-ACAP.aspx

January’09 ACAP cited in UK Government Report, “Digital Britain” as possible solution to online copyright. http://www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/broadcasting/5944.aspx

November’08 Microsoft’s Chief Counsel on IP Tom Rubin speaks on ACAP at London industry conference: “To the extent ACAP can develop into an enabler of content flow like Creative Commons and not become an inhibitor like some failed experiments with digital rights management, it has the potential to be an important element of more vibrant business models for publishers in the future… Whether the solution is ACAP or some other method, web sites currently are forced to communicate with search engines using robots.txt, a technical protocol developed 15 years ago without any understanding of how the business needs of newspapers and other web publishers would develop. Using that 1993-era technology to run today’s websites is like putting a Fiat engine in a Ferrari.” http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/trubin/11-20-08copyright.mspx

January’08 ACAP cited in European Commission’s Communication on Creative Content Online as possible solution to online copyright. http://ec.europa.eu/avpolicy/docs/other_actions/col_swp_en.pdf

November 2007 ACAP Version 1.0 launched in New York to international audience

In April 2007 ACAP commenced a pilot project in which the participants and technical partners undertook to specify and agree various use cases for ACAP to address. A technical workshop, attended by the participants and invited experts, has been held in London to discuss the use cases and agree next steps.

By February 2007 the pilot project was launched and participants announced.

By October 2006, ACAP had completed a feasibility stage and was formally announced^[1] at the Frankfurt Book Fair on 6 October 2006. A pilot program commenced in January 2007 involving a group of major publishers and media groups working alongside search engines and other technical partners.

ACAP and search engines

One of ACAP's initial goals is to provide better rules to search engine crawlers (or robots) when accessing websites. In this role it can be considered as an extension to the Robots Exclusion Standard (or "robots.txt") for communicating website access information to automated web crawlers.

It has been suggested^[2] that ACAP is unnecessary, since the robots.txt protocol already exists for the purpose of managing search engine access to websites. However, others^[3] support ACAP’s view^[4] that robots.txt is no longer sufficient. ACAP argues that robots.txt was devised at a time when both search engines and online publishing were in their infancy and as a result is insufficiently nuanced to support today’s much more sophisticated business models of search and online publishing. Microsoft's Chief Counsel on IP Tom Rubin speaking at an industry conference in London in November'08 said: "Using that [Robots.txt] 1993-era technology to run today's websites is like putting a Fiat engine in a Ferrari." http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/trubin/11-20-09copyright.mspx

ACAP aims to make it possible to express more complex permissions than the simple binary choice of “inclusion” or “exclusion”.

As an early priority, ACAP is intended to provide a practical and consensual solution to some of the rights-related issues which in some cases have led to litigation^[5]^[6] between publishers and search engines.

Only one search engine, the little-known Exalead, has confirmed that they will be adopting ACAP.

Comment and debate

The project has generated considerable online debate, in the search^[7], content^[8] and intellectual property^[9] communities. If there is one linking theme to the commentary, it is that keeping the specification simple will be critical to its successful implementation, and that the aims of the project are focussed on the needs of publishers, rather than readers. Many have seen this as a flaw.^[10]^[11] although ACAP would argue that its main objective at this point is the business to business environment and that readers will ultimately benefit if publishers continue to put high-value content on the Internet and if newspapers find a way of financing the production of the kind of content that makes the Internet a highly valued information resource.

ACAP participants

Publishers confirmed as participating in the ACAP pilot project include (as at 16 February 2007)

Notes and references

[1] Official ACAP press release announcing project launch

[2] News Publishers Want Full Control of the Search Results

[3] Why you should care about Automated Content Access Protocol

[4] ACAP FAQ on robots.txt

[5] "Is Google Legal?" OutLaw article about Copiepresse litigation

[6] Guardian article about Google's failed appeal in Copiepresse case

[7] Search Engine Watch article

[8] Shore.com article about ACAP

[9] IP Watch article about ACAP

[10] Acap: a shot in the foot for publishing

[11] Acap shoots back

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