Publishers offered an olive branch to Internet search engines such as Google Friday amid bitter legal tussles with new technology that would make content widely available but safeguard copyrights.
Book publishers and media companies have accused US-based giant Google of riding roughshod over intellectual property rights by providing free access to protected content.
US and European publishing houses have gone to court against the Web company over its two-year-old library project, in which it is scanning the pages of millions of books and posting them online.
The program allows users to access a limited number of pages from copyrighted volumes and download entire books whose copyrights have expired, such as classic novels.
Meanwhile a number of media companies, including Agence France-Presse, have launched legal action over what they say is Google's use of news stories on its Web site without permission or fair compensation.
Last month, a Belgian court ordered Google to stop reproducing articles, photos, and graphics from Belgian newspapers on its news site.
To address the problem, a consortium led by The World Association of Newspapers (WAN), unveiled a new project known as ACAP at the Frankfurt Book Fair with which content found on the Web can be clearly flagged with terms of permission that are easily recognized by search engines.
"Ultimately, ACAP will benefit everyone: publishers, search engines and, most of all, consumers, by creating a fair and content-rich online experience for all of us: no standards wars; no proprietary monopolies; open collaboration - win-win for all," WAN Chairman Gavin O'Reilly told a news conference here.
He said that search engine technology used by Web sites such as Google to pool content for readers was unable to recognize license agreements with publishing companies.
"It is hard to follow rules if you don't know what they are," O'Reilly said. "And it is hard to read and understand rules if you are a machine. The solution is to make the rules easy to understand."
Under the new Automated Content Access Protocol, such agreements would be seen automatically by search engine "spiders," which seek and then pool content.
O'Reilly noted that any implementation of ACAP, which is to begin a pilot run next month, would have to include all major search engines and libraries. "We've been trying to build a coalition," he said.
The director of content partnership at Google, Jim Gerber, said that the US-based company was open to a fair solution to the raging disputes with publishers but firmly denied that it was trampled over copyrights.
"Our mission is to provide greater access to content," he told the panel. "We want to help content providers grow their businesses.
"Google very strongly does believe in respect for copyrights and the right not to be indexed" or listed in a Google search, he added.
The president of the International Publishers Association, Ana Maria Cabanellas, said that she believed that the conflict was rooted in the growing pains of the industry but could be resolved. "We are now faced with new partners such as Internet booksellers, the online libraries and the search engines," she said.
"All these partners have different histories and cultures, which need to be reconciled with those of the publishing industry."
The Frankfurt Book Fair, the publishing world's biggest annual gathering, runs through Sunday.
Publishers unveil potential answer to 'Google woes'
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