22) How do ACAP Versions 1.0 and 1.1 relate to the terms of typical licence terms?

ACAP versions 1.0 and 1.1 are designed to enable the communication of permissions and prohibitions for access and use of online content by "web crawlers" operated by search engines and other aggregators of online content. More >

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22) How do ACAP Versions 1.0 and 1.1 relate to the terms of typical licence terms?

ACAP versions 1.0 and 1.1 are designed to enable the communication of permissions and prohibitions for access and use of online content by "web crawlers" operated by search engines and other aggregators of online content.

ACAP Versions 1.0 and 1.1 are deliberately limited to communicating permissions and prohibitions for content use by aggregators. The vocabulary is therefore limited to usages that are typically involved in operating and delivering aggregation services such as are provided by a search engine or a web archive. The usages recognised in ACAP Versions 1.0 and 1.1 are those represented by the terms “crawl”, “index”, “preserve”, “present”, “follow” and “other”. The meanings of these terms are defined in the ACAP Dictionary.

Permissions and prohibitions can be applied to all web crawlers (and the aggregation services that lie behind those crawlers), or to specific, named crawlers (representing specific aggregators or aggregation services). Thus, to give a simple example, crawler A can be permitted to index a website, while crawler B can be prohibited.

Permissions and prohibitions can be applied to all online content on a specific website or specified sets of content. Thus crawlers may be permitted to crawl and index content in a “public” area, but prohibited from crawling and indexing content in a “private” area, even if the “private” area is accessible.

Permissions and prohibitions can be linked to the purpose for which crawling is taking place. Thus an aggregator who uses a single crawler to aggregate content for a variety of different purposes – e.g. different services – can be told that usages are permitted for certain purposes but not for others. This concept of the purpose of a usage is fundamental to traditional copyright law and to licensing, but was entirely absent from the protocols used for communicating with web crawlers prior to ACAP.

Permissions can be qualified in a variety of ways, depending upon the usage. As an example, an aggregator may be permitted to index and preserve (store) content, but only for a limited period of time. As another example, an aggregator may be permitted to present (deliver) content to an end-user, but the precise form in which it is presented can be constrained to prohibit changes in content or form, and to control the way that content is summarised in “snippets”. The concept of qualified permissions is largely absent from traditional methods of communication with web crawlers.

ACAP Versions 1.0 and 1.1 do not enable communication of any terms or conditions other than permitted and prohibited usages, as these cannot currently be processed by web crawlers. It is anticipated that future versions of ACAP will address this limitation.

ACAP Versions 1.0 and 1.1 do not enable communication of any terms or conditions to end users, as the sole focus of ACAP Versions 1.0 and 1.1 was communication of permissions and prohibitions to aggregators. It is anticipated that future versions of ACAP will address the communication of end user terms and conditions.