“Google joins world of copyright” - ACAP

Said Gavin O'Reilly, president of the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) and chair of ACAP, “Copyright is a mainstay, not just of creativity, but of the modern world economy and this settlement puts copyright back on a more even keel. Google has recognised that there is high value in indexing high-value content and that revenue should in fact be shared by both the indexer and the creator.

“Every book in the world, not to mention every newspaper, magazine, film, TV programme, CD, computer game, microchip, and brand, depends on copyright or a similar intellectual property right for its long-term viability.

“This settlement paves the way for all rights holders, regardless of their chosen business model or rights management systems, to get the appropriate reward for their efforts - while at the same time ensuring the widest possible access.”

Simon Juden, the CEO of the UK Publishers Association, added, “If a Books Rights Registry is to be effective, it will need to be complemented by the types of technical standards for rights management that ACAP offers. In this way, all business models can contribute to a competitive environment for online book distribution.

“The beauty of ACAP is that it works with all business models, including registries; it is open and non-proprietary; it offers flexibility for rights holders; and is technologically simple to implement for search engines and other aggregators. It is worth remembering that over half the UK book trade by volume has now implemented ACAP.”

Added Mark Bide, project director of ACAP, “This is an important solution for those who favour collective solutions but there will always be a call for differentiation and that is something that ACAP can deliver. It is one thing to do a deal with a single group of rights holders, but there are thousands of publishers out there who may choose to have different terms and conditions set for use of their content.

“Now that Google has joined the world of copyright, ACAP makes Google's life easy as we have provided them with machine-readable licensing tools which work and which hundreds of publishers have already adopted. We now call on them to respect the capability that this provides,” Bide concluded.

For more on ACAP, go to www.the-acap.org.