Automated Content Access Protocol (ACAP), a tool devised by the worldwide publishing community to help make copyright work on the web, is being upgraded for the first time since it was first released in November 2007. ACAP Version 1.1 has been released with the aim of making it easier for publishers, search engine operators and other aggregators to implement the tool.
The new version includes a number of clarifications, as well as new features which, it is hoped, will broaden the appeal of ACAP. The most significant change is in providing explicit rules for how aggregators should interpret some of the more complex forms of expression in ACAP. It has now been made clear that, where an aggregator is unable (for whatever reason) to interpret a complex permission expression as the publisher clearly intended, the alternative is to interpret the expression as a prohibition. This is expected to help avoid the risk of using the publisher’s content in ways that the publisher had not intended should be permitted.
New features include a number of extensions to the ACAP vocabulary. Using the PLUS Coalition’s License Definition Format, it will now be possible to indicate when permissions data is embedded in a photograph. The new enhanced version also makes it possible to express constraints upon the presentation of content to end-users based upon their location (country, domain name, IP address range).
ACAP has been developed by World Association of Newspapers, the International Publishers Association and the European Publishers Council in collaboration with publisher participants and search engines. In February 2008, MPS Technologies, the technology arm of Macmillan India, had announced that its e-book platform, BookStore, had been successfully used as part of an intense 12 month ACAP pilot scheme. MPS Technologies developed a test BookStore site for the ACAP pilot - the only publisher participant to focus on e-books - and made a significant contribution to the success of the project. Later, ACAP 1.0 was implemented on 1,600 known websites across 53 countries worldwide.
The ACAP Technology Working Group is now turning its attention to how ACAP can be applied to the growing range of business models for online delivery of copyright content. The next version is likely to add new forms of expression to make ACAP more expressive and flexible, capable of being communicated in a variety of ways and interoperable with a wider range of web content delivery applications.
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