The Automated Content Access Protocol was launched on 29th November with the aim to “revolutionise the creation, dissemination, use and protection of copyright protected content on the world wide web”.
This system provides information about access and use of contents from several publications and links on-line. It aims at defining a process where all the information about any link to an article or a photo will be recognized easily every time it is needed. The main source of information will be recognized and interpreted by search engine “crawlers” that can be taught to the operator. In all, it will allow anybody to define online access and use policies of web content in a language that search engines can understand. In the future, ACAP could be extended to other media, including music and audiovisual sectors.
To date, no representative of authors’ organisations have been involved in the process. The IFJ believes that if ACAP is to become an international standard it should take full account of authors’ rights and be able to identify the author of a work.
A growing group of publishers has started implementing ACAP on their web site.
Visit ACAP web site:
http://www.the-acap.org/