About: Automated Content Access Protocol

Automated Content Access Protocol ("ACAP") was proposed in 2006 as a method of providing machine-readable permissions information for content, in the hope that it would have allowed automated processes (such as search-engine web crawling) to be compliant with publishers' policies without the need for human interpretation of legal terms. ACAP was developed by organisations that claimed to represent sections of the publishing industry (World Association of Newspapers, , International Publishers Association). It was intended to provide support for more sophisticated online publishing business models, but was criticised for being biased towards the fears of publishers who see search and aggregation as a threat rather than as a source of traffic and new readers.