Angry publishers stamp on Google spiders

Publishers around the world are collectively putting their foot down against search engines in a new global initiative to regain control of their content.

The initiative, called Acap (Automated content access protocol), is intended to stop search engines aggregating content in breach of permission or copyright.

Permissions on different forms of content across the internet are currently diverse, without a single standard model to oversee how and where content is being read.

This means when users look something up on the internet, they might access it without permission from the content's publisher, through no fault of their own or the search engine they used.

Instead, a software tag can be used to communicate with search engine spiders. The tag details the conditions under which a search engine can use published material.

Jens Bammell, Director of the International Publishers Association (IPA), said "publishers feel like they're losing control" of their content. Bammell said Acap is about integrating search engines and publishers' business needs in a sophisticated manner.

Google was recently banned from publishing snippets from Belgian news websites. But Bammell said this incentive is one where the publishers and search engines can work together.

Besides IPA, other bodies involved include the European Publishers Council and the World Association of Newspapers.

The Acap pilot project is due for launch later in 2006 and is envisaged to last 12 months.

At the time of writing, Google and Yahoo! had not responded to calls for comment.