Frequently Asked Questions
1) What is ACAP (Automated Content Access Protocol)?
Essentially, ACAP is all about managing copyright. More >
2) Where is the driving force behind ACAP?
The primary drivers of ACAP are the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), the European Publishers Council (EPC) and the International Publishers Association (IPA). More >
3) How important is ACAP to the publishing and search engine industry?
For the first time ever, the newspaper, magazine and book publishing and search engine industries have worked together on a joint standard. It is thanks to this collaboration that the necessary high-level resources, skills and knowledge have been available as well as the political will to see this project succeed. More >
4) Should publishers be allowed to control their content?
Copyright law exists all over the world and gives creators and publishers the right to decide about how the content that they have created and invested in should be legitimately exploited by others. The media industries, which exist only because of copyright, contribute massively to every developed economy in the physical world, and are vital to the economic future. The ability to express and share permissions for access and use in standardised ways forms one part of the necessary infrastructure to allow that to happen as effectively on the network as in the physical world. More >
5) Why should I implement ACAP?
More >
6) Why should book publishers be interested in ACAP - isn't it all about news?
One of ACAP's first use cases was for book publishers. More >
7) Isn’t this simply an attempt by publishers to “lock up” their content?
No – precisely the opposite is true. More >
8) What about existing technology, robots.txt?
ACAP will work smoothly with the existing robots.txt protocol. More >
9) Is ACAP restricted to text media?
No: ACAP is designed to be extensible to all types of content published online, including audio and video. More >
10) Isn’t this all about money?
No: but no one would deny that it is partly about money. More >
11) Isn’t ACAP focused entirely on publishers’ recent disagreements with Google?
No: ACAP is a long-term strategic project, not a search for a short-term tactical remedy. More >
12) Aren’t Google offering commercial deals to some publishers?
Yes: but Google is not the only search engine with which publishers have relationships – and search engines have to have relationships with a very large number of publishers. More >
13) Are the search engines involved?
Major search engines were involved in the project pre-launch and search engine Exalead was a full participant in the pilot project. More >
14) Is ACAP just about a relationship between publishers and the big search engines?
Absolutely not, though it was born originally out of publishers' desire to find a way of asserting their online copyright that didn't involve lengthy and expensive legal cases with search engines or any other partner in the supply chain. We are currently working on the next phase of the project where we are extending ACAP for other business models and media. Any ACAP member (see below) can submit a user case proposal based on their own specific business model. Whilst the original use cases have of course influednced the way that ACAP looks right now, ACAP will develop as more use cases are proposed. More >
15) Can anyone join ACAP?
Any organization can join ACAP as a member for a €5,000 annual fee. Benefits include getting up close to the project and having the right to propose a use case and work with our technical team to devise ACAP semantics specific to your needs. For more information on membership, please contact mark.bide@rightscom.com or heidilambert@hlcltd.demon.co.uk More >
16) How do I implement ACAP?
It's quick and easy - and free- and will take an IT professional less than half an hour to action. Basic implementation will have no effect on the functionality of your site(s). Go to www.the-acap.org/Implement-ACAP.aspx for step by step guidelines on how to get ACAP-enabled. More >
17) Will ACAP implementation affect my website traffic?
No. Independent News & Media implemented ACAP in January 2008. More >
18) Who has implemented ACAP?
Over 800 websites have now implemented ACAP in more than 40 countries worldwide. About 53% of implementers are based in the US. A regularly updated list can be found on the website click here More >
19) Who "owns" ACAP after it is implemented and who is responsible for maintenance and upgrades and making sure it works successfully?
ACAP is a non-proprietary language for communicating your access and use policies which has been developed thanks to the resources of the publishing industry. More >
20) What is ACAP's position regarding Sitemaps?
At the beginning of the project, some of the publisher participants suggested using the Sitemaps protocol as a possible syntax for ACAP, but were firmly told by the search engines that (from their point of view) Sitemaps was entirely inappropriate to the use which ACAP proposed for it. More >
21) Can ACAP be used to extend the scope of copyright, and in particular to frustrate exceptions to copyright?
ACAP enables publishers to make statements of their policy with respect to the content they own or control; in view of the lack of consistency in intellectual property law internationally, there may be times when a publisher's stated policies are not consistent with the law in a particular country. More >
22) How does ACAP decide which Use Cases to develop?
Use Cases can be submitted by any ACAP member. More >
23) What is the difference between ACAP and Creative Commons?
There are some real similarities between ACAP and Creative Commons, and some differences. More >
24) What next for ACAP?
We are still in a phase of "marketing" whereby we continue to work to get the ACAP message out worldwide both to business and to law makers and decision makers. More technical work is also being progressed. The next phase will involve critical discussions on governance and on how ACAP will be managed in the future. More >
25) Is there anything I can do to support ACAP?
There are many things you can do at this stage to support ACAP: More >
Full Responses
1) What is ACAP (Automated Content Access Protocol)?
Essentially, ACAP is all about managing copyright.
It is a non-proprietary protocol, developed by publishers, which is designed to ensure that anyone who publishes content on the web and who wants to ensure that the web “crawlers” used by search engines and other online aggregators can read and understand the terms and conditions of access and re-use. In other words, ACAP is all about making copyright work on the web.
To date, the terms and conditions used on web site have been legal documents buried deeply somewhere on the website. Nobody reads them – and the machines that crawl a site certainly can’t read them so they are of very limited value!
ACAP terms and conditions are machine-readable. The content owner decides on the terms and conditions and uses ACAP as the communications protocol to express them in machine-readable language.
ACAP is intended to put content owners back in control of their online content in a way that is conducive to developing new online business models, putting new, high-quality content on the net and to maximizing the benefits of the relationship with search engines and other aggregators.
Devised by publishers in collaboration with search engines after an intensive year-long pilot in 2006-2007, ACAP is set to revolutionise the creation, dissemination, use, and protection of copyright-protected content on the worldwide web.
ACAP is destined to become the universal permissions protocol on the Internet, an open, non-proprietary standard through which content owners can communicate permissions for access and use to online intermediaries.
In the first instance, ACAP provides a framework that will allow any publisher, large or small, to express access and use policies in a language that search engines' robot "spiders" can be taught to understand. ACAP’s scope is now being extended to other business relationships and other media types including music and the audiovisual sectors..
Thanks to the enabling, open nature of ACAP, content providers will now be able to make more content available to users through the search engines, and to continue to innovate and invest in the development of business models for network publishing. With ACAP, the online publishing environment will become as rich and diverse as the offline one.
2) Where is the driving force behind ACAP?
The primary drivers of ACAP are the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), the European Publishers Council (EPC) and the International Publishers Association (IPA).
These three organisations have steered and financed the initial stages of the project. The project director is Mark Bide of Rightscom Limited, the Technical Manager, Francis Cave and the Marketing Manager, Heidi Lambert. The pilot project was highly successful thanks to the publisher partners who worked to put together the first use cases. These publishers were:
Agence France-Presse
De Persgroep
Impresa
Independent News & Media Plc
John Wiley & Sons
Macmillan / Holtzbrinck
Media 24
Reed Elsevier
Sanoma Corporation
British Library
Exalead
3) How important is ACAP to the publishing and search engine industry?
For the first time ever, the newspaper, magazine and book publishing and search engine industries have worked together on a joint standard. It is thanks to this collaboration that the necessary high-level resources, skills and knowledge have been available as well as the political will to see this project succeed.
ACAP will enable new uses of works, and increase in their visibility, without any compromise to publishers’ commercial freedoms. In general, though, publishers make their content available with the help of partners and third parties (distributors and retailers, for example) who are paid a fee or given a share of revenue in return for the services they provide. So there is no reason why, in the online world, they will not choose to do something similar as long as they can negotiate commercially acceptable terms that reflect the balance of value contributed by the publisher and the third party. Equally there is no reason why they shouldn't choose NOT to make their content available in this way if they choose not to do so. It is an important principle that the publishers' right to decide what happens to their material is properly respected.
However, to date, many aggregators have chosen to adopt a liberal interpretation of copyright - "it's OK until someone tells us it isn't" - which means there is an enormous amount of infringing material being hosted, sometimes by major companies. Leaving aside the question of whether or not this is reasonable, we have now found a better way for publishers of all types and in all media to make permissions for their content known to aggregators in a way they can easily understand.
4) Should publishers be allowed to control their content?
Copyright law exists all over the world and gives creators and publishers the right to decide about how the content that they have created and invested in should be legitimately exploited by others. The media industries, which exist only because of copyright, contribute massively to every developed economy in the physical world, and are vital to the economic future. The ability to express and share permissions for access and use in standardised ways forms one part of the necessary infrastructure to allow that to happen as effectively on the network as in the physical world.
As Dominic Young, Group Director of Publishing Services at News International said recently: “Copyright has led not to a restriction of content, but an explosion of it, an unstoppable, constant sharing of ideas and tidal waves of choice for consumers. If the knowledge economy is the keystone of future growth, then copyright is the foundation.”
5) Why should I implement ACAP?
- because I care about how my online content is used
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because ACAP is set to become a universal standard
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because I want to put out a strong message that I have the right to manage how my online content is used
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because I have no idea who or what is spidering my content or what they are doing with it
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because I want the confidence to invest in high-quality online content
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because I want the confidence to put my high-quality offline content online and make it widely available
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because I want to develop new online business models
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because ACAP is simple, non-proprietary and free
Why wouldn’t you implement ACAP?
6) Why should book publishers be interested in ACAP - isn't it all about news?
One of ACAP's first use cases was for book publishers.
Macmillan’s objective for participating in the pilot project was:
Book publishers will benefit from ACAP :
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Because there is some great content out there and it should be made as accessible as possible
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Because they want to make it easy for their customers to create their own experiences with the building blocks of our content.
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Because ACAP will put content in content and make it more valuable to customers
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Because ACAP will reduce the inefficiencies in how book publishers share content with their partners
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Because ACAP helps publishers better understand what their customers wan
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Because ACAP provides search engine crawlers the metadata they need on access and permissions.
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Because ACAP enables a dynamic flow of content with syndication and delivery partners.
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Because ACAP keeps it simple!
7) Isn’t this simply an attempt by publishers to “lock up” their content?
No – precisely the opposite is true.
Every publisher who implements ACAP will have the confidence to make content available to search engines much more widely than is currently the case.
8) What about existing technology, robots.txt?
ACAP will work smoothly with the existing robots.txt protocol.
We recognise that robots.txt is a well established method for communication between content owners and crawler operators. However, robots.txt is not sophisticated enough for today's content and publishing models. Robots.txt, in its current form as implemented by most search engine operators, provides only a simple choice between allowing and disallowing access. These simple choices are inconsistently interpreted.
Microsoft's Chief Counsel in IP Tom Rubin recently said that using robots.txt in its current form to express permissions in this day and age was like "putting a Fiat engine in a Ferrari." A number of proprietary extensions have been implemented by several of the major search engines, but not all search engines recognise all or even any of these extensions. ACAP provides a standard mechanism for expressing conditional access which is what is now required. ACAP used Robots.txt on the insistence of the search engines. An xml format is being used in other applications.
9) Is ACAP restricted to text media?
No: ACAP is designed to be extensible to all types of content published online, including audio and video.
The next phase of the ACAP is working on extending ACAP for other business models and media including the music and movie industries, and for syndicated content.
10) Isn’t this all about money?
No: but no one would deny that it is partly about money.
Publishers and indeed authors are not ashamed about making money out of publishing – that is their business. They make substantial investments in the creation and distribution of content, and believe that they should be able to make a fair return on those investments. Business models are changing, and publishers need a protocol to express permissions of access and use that is flexible and extensible as new business models arise. ACAP will be entirely agnostic with respect to business models, but will ensure that revenues can be distributed appropriately. ACAP presents a win win for the whole online publishing community with the promise of more high quality content and more innovation and investment in the online publishing sector. ACAP is for the large as well as the small and even the individuals. It will benefit all content providers whether they are working alone or through publishers. A future without publishers willing and able to invest in high quality content and get a return on that investment is a future without high-quality content on the net.
11) Isn’t ACAP focused entirely on publishers’ recent disagreements with Google?
No: ACAP is a long-term strategic project, not a search for a short-term tactical remedy.
The various court cases that have arisen between publishers and Google are a symptom of the problem that ACAP seeks to solve, not the problem itself. Just like Google, publishers would like to find solutions outside the courtroom. This is ACAP’s objective. The relationship between publishers and aggregators should not be adversarial but co-operative – for the benefit of their common customers.
12) Aren’t Google offering commercial deals to some publishers?
Yes: but Google is not the only search engine with which publishers have relationships – and search engines have to have relationships with a very large number of publishers.
Business relationships on the internet should not simply be about deals done between very large corporations. It will not be possible to manage the very large number of business relationships in the absence of much greater automation. ACAP aims to enable the majority of smaller publishers, smaller search engines and other innovative intermediaries to enter the growing market for online content with confidence.
13) Are the search engines involved?
Major search engines were involved in the project pre-launch and search engine Exalead was a full participant in the pilot project.
Speaking at a recent industry event, Microsoft’s Chief Counsel of IP Strategy Tom Rubin asserted that editors must be able to maintain appropriate control of their own content and the experience of their readers, and not cede those to search engines or aggregators.
“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.”
Rubin also talked of the importance of quality of content and of the importance of making publishing work online to protect that quality. He concluded his speech by saying, “In closing, don’t let anyone tell you that the choice is between Luddite resistance to new technology and passive acquiescence to the destruction of your industry. In other words, quality content is of great value and it is time to reclaim what is yours. The stakes here are high. Remember that, in a very real sense, we are all in this together as stewards of our cultural future. So let’s finally turn the page on a failed model that has not worked for reporters and editors and publishers. Let’s instead work together to build a model that works for newspapers and technology alike – and that sustains and enriches the free and vibrant media that our free societies require.”
To read a full transcript of the speech, please go to:
www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/trubin/11-20-08copyright.mspx
Once ACAP achieves a critical mass, we are confident that the search engines will come on board. We believe it is a question of “when”, not “if”. But widespread implementation by content owners will be a driving force to bring them on board. Implementation of ACAP is a public statement that you care about your online content and how it is used. If you don’t assert ownership, third parties will continue to abuse your intellectual property.
14) Is ACAP just about a relationship between publishers and the big search engines?
Absolutely not, though it was born originally out of publishers' desire to find a way of asserting their online copyright that didn't involve lengthy and expensive legal cases with search engines or any other partner in the supply chain. We are currently working on the next phase of the project where we are extending ACAP for other business models and media. Any ACAP member (see below) can submit a user case proposal based on their own specific business model. Whilst the original use cases have of course influednced the way that ACAP looks right now, ACAP will develop as more use cases are proposed.
15) Can anyone join ACAP?
Any organization can join ACAP as a member for a €5,000 annual fee. Benefits include getting up close to the project and having the right to propose a use case and work with our technical team to devise ACAP semantics specific to your needs. For more information on membership, please contact mark.bide@rightscom.com or heidilambert@hlcltd.demon.co.uk
16) How do I implement ACAP?
It's quick and easy - and free- and will take an IT professional less than half an hour to action. Basic implementation will have no effect on the functionality of your site(s). Go to www.the-acap.org/Implement-ACAP.aspx for step by step guidelines on how to get ACAP-enabled.
- and please let us know when you have!
Contact:
Project Director Mark Bide at mark.bide@rightscom.com
Or
Marketing Manager, Heidi Lambert at heidilambert@hlcltd.demon.co.uk
www.the-acap.org
17) Will ACAP implementation affect my website traffic?
No. Independent News & Media implemented ACAP in January 2008.
In our August newsletter (www.the-acap.org/Documents.aspx) we published their weblog for the period July '07 to Jun'08 and which shows that there was no impact on their traffic.
18) Who has implemented ACAP?
Over 800 websites have now implemented ACAP in more than 40 countries worldwide. About 53% of implementers are based in the US. A regularly updated list can be found on the website click here
19) Who "owns" ACAP after it is implemented and who is responsible for maintenance and upgrades and making sure it works successfully?
ACAP is a non-proprietary language for communicating your access and use policies which has been developed thanks to the resources of the publishing industry.
In terms of maintenance, at some point during the next year, it will be decided whether ACAP will be set up as an independent organisation working with other standards organisations or whether its work will be handed over to an existing standards organisation. In either case, ACAP will continue to be managed and maintained.
20) What is ACAP's position regarding Sitemaps?
At the beginning of the project, some of the publisher participants suggested using the Sitemaps protocol as a possible syntax for ACAP, but were firmly told by the search engines that (from their point of view) Sitemaps was entirely inappropriate to the use which ACAP proposed for it.
They told us that, in order for them to be able to read and implement access and use permissions, the only mechanism they would be able to recognise was an extension to the robots exclusion protocol. If the search engines would prefer that we express the same permissions using Sitemaps, and would like to work with us to find the best way of doing this, we would be only too pleased. Sitemaps is an XML-based syntax which would be very much easier for us to work with, in comparison with the rather primitive structures of robot.txt. We are not wedded to any single method for the communication of permissions, and already have a draft XML format for ACAP expressions.
21) Can ACAP be used to extend the scope of copyright, and in particular to frustrate exceptions to copyright?
ACAP enables publishers to make statements of their policy with respect to the content they own or control; in view of the lack of consistency in intellectual property law internationally, there may be times when a publisher's stated policies are not consistent with the law in a particular country.
This is as true of an ACAP statement of policy as it is about the "terms and conditions" of use which almost all publishers include somewhere on their websites. ACAP is about communication of policies, not enforcement. If a user (whether that user is an individual or an organisation) is confident that their use falls within an exception within the relevant jurisdiction, they are as free to make that choice in an ACAP-enabled world as in one where ACAP does not exist. There is a difference, though: in a fully ACAP-enabled world, they cannot claim that it is impossible for them to know what a particular publisher's policy is with respect to the content they make available.
22) How does ACAP decide which Use Cases to develop?
Use Cases can be submitted by any ACAP member.
Assuming that there is sufficient interest in the Use Case from a group of members, we will then work with a group of members to take these Use Cases to pilot implementation. Priorities are determined in part by the availability of internal resources, and in part by the enthusiasm of the appropriate group of technical personnel from among our members to work on the specific tasks involved. ACAP itself has no agenda on which specific business relationships require better policy communication or which particular sets of policies (permissions) need to be communicated in the context of those business relationships. Our stance is entirely business neutral. We see our role as enabling not prescriptive.
23) What is the difference between ACAP and Creative Commons?
There are some real similarities between ACAP and Creative Commons, and some differences.
The main similarity is that both of us are involved in the business of expressing rights holder policies with respect to their content, not enforcing those policies. So, a rights holder publishing under a Creative Commons licence is saying to a user: “I am happy to give you permission to use my content in these ways, but not in these other ways, subject to the following conditions”; and an ACAP expression of policies with respect to search engine access and use (which is where ACAP’s v1.0 is focused) is saying something similar to a search engine operator about the content to which is applies. The uses that a search engine makes of content are different from those made by an individual, but the principle is the same.
There are some differences, however. CC is primarily aimed at giving permission to end users, while ACAP is focused primarily on business-to-business relationships. The simple CC iconographic representation of permissions is backed up by a legal licence; ACAP rather depends on the fundamental right of the copyright owner to determine what use(s) can be made of their content, and on a well-ordered market place of relationships between businesses. CC is intended to be read and understood by people, ACAP by machines. ACAP is unashamedly about commercial content exploitation; CC is more about non-commercial uses.
So, ACAP and Creative Commons exist to tackle rather different sets of requirements. There has, however, been productive and useful dialogue between ACAP and Creative Commons which may yet develop further, since we clearly have some items of common agenda.
24) What next for ACAP?
We are still in a phase of "marketing" whereby we continue to work to get the ACAP message out worldwide both to business and to law makers and decision makers. More technical work is also being progressed. The next phase will involve critical discussions on governance and on how ACAP will be managed in the future.
25) Is there anything I can do to support ACAP?
There are many things you can do at this stage to support ACAP:
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become a member (and, if you like, propose your own use cases)
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provide us with a speaking platform to present on ACAP to the publishing community
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sign up for our newsletter
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include information on ACAP in your own communication, internal and extermal (we are always happy to provide new content)
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implement ACAP today