News Sites Seek More Rights

A global consortium has made the first move in a bid to give news providers greater control over their online content.

Organisations including the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) and the European Publishers Council are behind the initiative to ensure the rights of news websites are respected by search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

Known as Automated Content Access Protocol (ACAP), the new commands could limit how long copies of articles are kept in indexes as well as set time delays on access.

However, the Associated Press reports that search engines would need to agree to recognise the new rules by mutual agreement as they are not enforced by law.

A Google spokesman said the company welcomed any move to improve co-operation between news publishers and search engines, according to Press Gazette.

But he did reveal a touch of scepticism about the new commands by adding: “We are discussing this proposal with the WAN and in particular how it can build on robots.txt - the nearly universally accepted Internet standard that already enables publishers automatically to prevent the indexation of their content and is honoured by all reputable search engines.”

Just a day after the launch of ACAP, Times Online announced that it has become the first UK national news publisher to implement the new commands.