European Publishers Band Together To Underscore Lack Of Understanding Search Engines, The Web
Posted: July 13, 2009
By: techcrunch.com
International publishers demand new intellectual property rights protection to safeguard the future of journalism. That’s the title of a press release distributed late last week by the European Publishers Councel (EPC). Pretty heavy stuff, right? They don’t ask, they demand. They’re not looking for more effective application of the current IP rights protection, they want an entirely new one. And once they’ve secured that, the future of journalism will be safeguarded (hold the applause).
The rest of the news release contains more gems, like this quote from Gavin O’Reilly, Group Chief Executive Officer, Independent News & Media, President of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) and Chairman of ACAP (Automated Content Access Protocol):………[read entire story]
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To set the record straight, publishers generally and ACAP (Automated Content Access Protocol) specifically are not asking anyone for a change in European law. Rather, ACAP is, in a transparent and open way, creating tools so that copyright and licences can work in a machine-to-machine way without needing a human somewhere in the middle. This reflects the reality of the internet where so much depends on computers being able to operate autonomously on a massive scale, for example when search engines create their indexes. What ACAP is asking of regulators is for recognition that ACAP is just as valid a way of writing a licence as a contract on paper written by a lawyer, and so is one of the solutions to the digital rights conundrum. We want them to encourage search engines and other aggregators to use this tool to demonstrate commitment to their oft-stated acknowledgement that content belongs to the content providers and it is for them, the rightsholders, to decide how and on what terms third parties should use it. Members of the ACAP community also want to use it to facilitate other machine-to-machine functions unrelated to search, such as permissioning use of content by other third parties. ACAP is not just about money, but about making content widely available in the existing copyright framework which has driven the immense growth in the creation and availability of content for hundreds of years. Copyright is the cornerstone of innovation and progress in publishing as well the other creative industries. ACAP is one step towards making it continue to work in the 21st century.”