WAN’s Starry Eyed Surprise: Search Engines’s AWOL From ACAP

So the World Association of Newspapers is surprised the search engines/portal like Yahoo, MSN and Google have not joined its ACAP rights management pilot project. Here’s a hint why they haven’t: it starts with a “W” and ends with an “N”. Yes, really.

ACAP is a JV between WAN, the European Publishers Council (EPC), the International Publishers Association (IPA) and the European Newspapers Association (ENPA) aimed at developing a platform that would allow search engines to recognize the terms and conditions of specific publishers sites and web pages. As ACAP’s site describes it: “With ACAP, a newspaper web site could, for example, allow all search engines to index its content, but only allow selected search engines — those who have paid a royalty or have a commercial agreement — to display articles, and, if they so choose, only for a limited time. It would also allow all images to be properly attributed, as they are in the newspaper.”

At the ACAP conference in London, WAN president Gavin O’Reilly said that he was “perplexed” and “somewhat troubled” that GYM had chosen not to become members of the project, reports Journalism.co.uk, and urged them that they should see it as a new opportunity for dialog with publishers rather than as a concession to them over copyright disagreements. WAN and the search engines have different view on what they consider search engines’ legal boundaries, and ACAP does not address that.More details in the story.

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