Search

The article focuses on the refusal of the world's largest search engine companies to support the automated content access protocol (ACAP). It relates that the protocol will acknowledge publishers' rights to control their content once it is captured by search engines. However, the author notes that Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo! Inc. decline to support the protocol, instead they continue to endorse robots.txt, which only grants or denies access to a search engine's crawler to collect information. It also mentions that Google asserts that the ACAP protocol is incompatible with its search technology as its reason for not supporting it.

The article reports on the initiative of publishing industries towards international copyright issues. The Newspaper Association of America has participated in the establishment of the Automated Content Access Protocol in London, England. It is stated that the protocol is a joint effort of the publishing industries to open technical standards including control access to copyright material for newspapers, magazines and book publishers. It is emphasized that the standard will be designed to be agnostic of business models while ensuring appropriate distribution of revenues.