Official AI Licensing Standard Now Requires Payment for Scraping
▼ Summary
– The Really Simple Licensing (RSL) 1.0 standard is now official, allowing publishers to set licensing and compensation rules for web crawlers that visit their sites.
– RSL expands on the robots.txt file and is supported by web infrastructure providers like Cloudflare, which can block non-compliant AI scrapers.
– This standard enables publishers to block their content from AI-powered search features, like Google’s AI Mode, while remaining in traditional search results.
– Over 1,500 media organizations and brands, including major publishers and platforms like The Associated Press and Reddit, now support the RSL standard.
– The RSL Collective collaborated with Creative Commons to add a payment option for nonprofits and individuals contributing to freely available online knowledge.
A new licensing standard has officially launched, aiming to compel artificial intelligence firms to compensate publishers for the content they scrape from the web. Known as Really Simple Licensing 1.0 (RSL), this specification empowers publishers to set clear rules for licensing and payment when web crawlers visit their sites. It represents a significant evolution of the familiar robots.txt file, which traditionally only controls which parts of a website a crawler can access.
The RSL Collective, backed by major players like Yahoo and O’Reilly Media, first announced the standard last September. While RSL itself cannot physically block non-compliant AI scrapers, the web infrastructure companies that support it can enforce these rules. Notable supporters now include Cloudflare and Akamai, adding substantial technical muscle to the initiative. This network of providers can deny access to crawlers that refuse to pay for a license, giving the standard practical teeth.
A key function of RSL 1.0 is allowing publishers to selectively block their content from AI-powered search features, such as Google’s AI Overviews, while remaining fully visible in traditional organic search results. Currently, Google’s opt-out mechanism is all-or-nothing; a site must choose between being excluded from all search features or being included in all of them. RSL aims to provide that missing layer of granular control, enabling publishers to participate in standard search but opt out of AI training, data grounding, or generative answer systems.
This development arrives amid heightened scrutiny of how tech giants use online content. The European Commission is actively investigating whether Google has breached antitrust rules by utilizing publishers’ material for its AI search features without providing a clear way for them to refuse. The RSL framework is positioned as a potential solution to this very conflict, offering a standardized method for publishers to communicate their preferences.
Support for RSL is growing rapidly across the media landscape. The collective reports that over 1,500 organizations and brands now endorse the standard. This coalition includes digital platforms like Reddit, Quora, and Medium, alongside major news publishers such as The Associated Press, Vox Media, The Guardian, and BuzzFeed. This broad adoption is critical for establishing RSL as an industry norm.
In a collaborative effort with Creative Commons, the RSL Collective has also introduced a new “contribution” payment option. This feature is designed specifically for non-profit organizations and individual creators, the people behind public datasets, code repositories, and informational websites. The goal is to ensure that the vast pool of freely available knowledge on the internet can also receive compensation when used to train or fuel commercial AI systems, acknowledging their vital role in the digital ecosystem.
Proponents argue that RSL 1.0 is becoming the trusted, expected method for signaling how content may be used in AI. They believe it gives these publisher preferences real weight, both in practical enforcement and in future legal interpretations surrounding copyright and fair use in the age of generative AI.
(Source: The Verge)
