Online Journalism News

Thank you for your continuing interest in the ACAP project. ACAP has responded very promptly to the comments that Rob Jonas is reported to have made to the effect that Google is refusing to implement ACAP on the grounds that "publishers don't need anything more than robots.txt". ACAP Chairman and WAN President Gavin O'Reilly had the following to say in response to Google: “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. 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. Google should reflect on the fact that after 12 months of intensive cross industry consideration and active development ¬ to which Google has been party ¬ 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. 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.” At another level, it is perhaps reasonable to point out that we are always available to help with reporting on ACAP. You state with some confidence that Times Online is the only publisher to have implemented ACAP. We were delighted when Times Online became the first publisher to implement ACAP in November 2007 but they are now far from alone. There are now ACAP-enabled publishers and websites in more than 16 countries worldwide and implementation is growing all the time. Heidi Lambert ACAP (www.the-acap.org)