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An Update on the Copiepresse/Google Dispute -- ACAP Enters the Picture

By Pamela Jones et al.

It's been more than a year since we had an update on the Copiepresse litigation against Google. There was supposed to be another court hearing in September, but it was postponed and last I heard it will be in November. In case it actually happens this time, Sean Daly has done the Copiepresse summons to Google for us in English as text.

Most of us have wondered from day one why Copiepresse didn't just use robots.txt to tell Google and other search engines what it wants left alone. Google did show them how, if you recall, and they agreed to use it. It turns out that publishers Copiepresse represents felt robots.txt was not sufficiently fine-tuned. So Copiepresse is now busy evangelizing for a system called ACAP, which stands for Automated Content Access Protocol.

I'm sure you love the very sound of it.

Well, if you are a publisher of the old fashioned variety, you may start drooling on your tie when I tell you it's a use and permissions system. I'll tell you all about it, but the short version is that it's an extension to robots.txt to give all control to publishers over their work by regulating what search engines can and can't do. It's a concept trying to solve a real problem, namely how to set up machine-interpretable permissions so that neither search engines nor publishers have to individually negotiate permissions.

But it's also Larry Lessig's Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace come true. They read his book and thought it was a great idea, I gather, and they are seriously trying to implement total control for publishers and the death of fair use as we know it.

Full post as published by Groklaw on October 16, 2008 (boomark / email).