WAN calls on Google to respect the rights of content creators and embrace ACAP

In a press release datelined Paris, 13 March 2008, the World Association of Newspapers has again called on Google to embrace a new publishing standard that allows website terms and conditions to be placed in machine-readable format so that publishers can have a say in how news aggregators and search engine companies use their content.

Google European executive Ron Jonas was quoted as saying this week that the company, the world’s largest search engine and content aggregator, was happy with the status quo, which “provides everything most publishers need.”
 
The current standard, called robots.txt, allows publishers to accept or reject search engine “crawlers” that are used to find content and re-purpose it on third party websites like Google News. But it does not allow publishers any options other than “yes” or “no”. The new ACAP standard, developed by a consortium of publishing groups, including WAN, allows publishers more options.

“It’s rather strange for Google to be telling publishers what they should think about robots.txt, when publishers worldwide -- across all sectors -- have already and clearly told Google that they fundamentally disagree,” said Gavin O'Reilly, President of WAN and head of the ACAP consortium. “If Google’s reason for not (apparently) supporting ACAP is built on its own commercial self-interest, then it should say so, and not glibly throw mistruths about.

“Publishers have specifically requested that Google respect the rights of content creators ­ which is a fairly uncontroversial request,” he said.
 
Publishers world-wide have started implementing ACAP, or the Automated Content Access Protocol, on their websites. ­Publishers in 16 countries are known to have already implemented it. The consortium includes news agencies, book and magazine publishers, libraries and search engines as well as newspaper publishers. Full details of ACAP, and how to implement it, can be found at http://www.the-acap.org

“Google should reflect on the fact that after 12 months of intensive cross industry consideration and active development ­in which Google has been party to ­ publishers have identified not only the patent inadequacies of robots.txt, but more progressively have come up with a practical, open and workable solution for publishers and content aggregators,” said Mr O'Reilly.

“So, we ­ once again -- call upon Google to embrace ACAP and to readily acknowledge the right of content owners to determine how their content is used.”