ACAP backers buoyed by UK Gov't 'support'

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 27 February 2008 03:43

Your IT - Home IT

The backers of new technique that they claim will revolutionise the creation, dissemination, use and protection of copyright-protected content on the worldwide web have seized on supportive comments in a major UK Government report. The Automated Content Access Protocol (ACAP) is a non-proprietary, global permissions tool designed to put content owners in control of their online content. It has been devised by publishers and was formally launched in November 2007 after a year-long pilot.

Its backers hope that it will 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.

They face a major hurdle in that ACAP has yet to receive any support, or involvement, from major search engines. So in the absence of this they have seized on the UK Government's endorsement - in its report: "Creative Britain: New Talents for the New Economy" - with great enthusiasm.
 
However the 'endorsement' in the report amounts to little more than an acknowledgement of the problem ACAP was created to address, and of ACAP's existence. The reference cited by ACAP reads:

"The licensing of information collected from the Internet is one issue that has emerged as traditional publishers develop new businesses on line. Pupils may use such content as reference material for their course work. Bloggers may link to it to promote their argument. And aggregators will typically collect content on a common theme from different sources.

"Each group has very different requirements, but web-based licensing systems have not kept pace. Consequently, many publishers are not able to tune licences to users' needs as they can with print. And traditional income projections are now unreliable because web based material can be repackaged in different ways without acknowledging the original source. The existing online licensing cannot discriminate between users' needs and has limited application.