Yahoo!Embraces ACAP
NEW OPEN STANDARD FOR PUBLISHERS AND SEARCH ENGINES GOES LIVE
Senior Vice President of Intellectual Property for Yahoo, Joe Siino,
spoke out in support of ACAP today at the launch of the new,
non-proprietary, open standard which went live today.
ACAP is set to put an end to publisher-search engine legal clashes. It
was unveiled and showcased in New York today, 29 November 2007 at a
conference opened by World Association of Newspapers President, Gavin
O‚Reilly and addressed by keynote speaker AP CEO Tom Curley.
ACAP has been developed at the initiative of the World Association of
Newspapers, the International Publishers Association and the European
Publishers Council in close collaboration with search engines to protect
the intellectual property of anyone wishing to make content available on
the worldwide web. ACAP is the result of an intense 12-month pilot
project which has resulted in a unique communications tool that will
open the door to more and more high level content, giving all content
owners the confidence to make their content available on the worldwide web.
From today, publishers globally will be encouraged to implement ACAP
version 1 which will allow publishers, broadcasters and indeed any other
publisher of content on the network to express their individual access
and use policies in a language that search engine robots and similar
automated tools can read and understand. ACAP is set to become a
universal standard. Click on the following link for instructions on how
to implement ACAP: http://www.the-acap.org/implement-acap.php
Yesterday, the Times Online became the first to implement ACAP.
Joe Siino said: „We are not members of ACAP but we are involved
informally as are our competitors. We appreciate ACAP’s effort to make
more content available on the web. We appreciate the concerns of our
publisher partners that they should feel confident to make content
available to the world. We also appreciate ACAP‚s really open and
collaborative approach. We look forward to working together in the future.
Politicians and business leaders have leant support to ACAP: EU
Commissioner Reding spoke via video to the conference saying: “Media
companies have not yet fully adapted their business models to new
distribution technologies, which cut across national borders and
traditionally separated sectors. The uncertainties associated with the
shift to digital technologies inhibit the development of many potential
The Commission is following the ACAP project closely, since it offers
possibilities for a win-win situation for all stakeholders.
Gavin O‚Reilly said: “We can overcome this obstacle to development
thanks to ACAP. ACAP will give the content industry worldwide the
incentive to innovate, create and disseminate. Newspapers, magazines,
books, journals, directory publishers: anyone involved in digital
publishing can now adopt a standard that will protect their interests
and will make them masters of their own content.
Gavin continued: “ACAP has been the huge beneficiary of input, technical
know-how and quiet wisdom of all of the major search engines, albeit in
an „informal way. So some 5 months on, I want to recognise this
publicly, with our sincere thanks. And to demonstrate how collaborative,
open and inclusive ACAP is, I am delighted to be able to welcome the
very large number of representatives from Yahoo, Microsoft and Google
Further use cases for different business models, including for the
audiovisual sector will be considered during the next phase of ACAP‚
ACAP Project Manager Mark Bide of Rightscom Ltd said: „Unprecedented
industry support and commitment to the ACAP pilot must now be followed
by a huge effort to roll ACAP out to the widest possible audience in the
shortest possible time so that the digital publishing sector can reap
the benefits of all the hard work to date.