Topic: content licensing
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AI's Free Web Scraping Era Ends With New Licensing Protocol
Major publishers and tech firms have introduced the Really Simple Licensing (RSL) standard to give content creators control and compensation when their work is used by AI systems. RSL replaces the simplistic robots.txt approach with enforceable, granular licensing terms, allowing publishers to sp...
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Perplexity AI Partners with Getty Images in Major Licensing Deal
Perplexity AI has secured a multi-year licensing deal with Getty Images, allowing legal use of its image library to enhance AI-driven search platforms and address past content scraping concerns. The partnership legitimizes Perplexity's prior use of Getty's imagery, which had faced plagiarism accu...
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Reddit and Google Deepen AI Partnership in New Talks
Reddit and Google are negotiating to integrate Reddit's content more deeply into Google's AI tools, potentially changing how information is curated and presented. Reddit is pursuing a dynamic pricing model for its data, aiming to be compensated as an essential supplier based on the value of its u...
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New York Times Sues Perplexity Over Copyright
The New York Times has sued AI company Perplexity for copyright infringement, alleging its products use and repackage Times content without permission or payment, substituting for the newspaper's own offerings. The lawsuit, part of a broader industry campaign, aims to pressure AI firms into forma...
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AI Firms Face New Robots.txt Rules for Pay-Per-Output Models
A new protocol called Really Simply Licensing (RSL) has been introduced to modernize robots.txt, allowing publishers to specify automated licensing terms and demand compensation for AI training or output generation. Supported by major platforms like Reddit and Yahoo, RSL is an open, decentralized...
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EU's Google Probe: SEO, AI, and Content Rights at Stake
The European Commission is investigating Google's use of copyrighted online content to train its AI systems, a case that could redefine fair use and require new licensing models for digital content. Publishers allege Google's AI summaries, like AI Overviews, significantly reduce traffic to origin...
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Meta Inks AI Deals with CNN, Fox News, and USA Today
Meta has secured licensing deals with major media outlets like CNN and Fox News to incorporate their content into its AI chatbot, shifting from web-scraping to formal partnerships for sourcing material. This move aims to preempt legal disputes over copyright, following lawsuits like The New York ...
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Netflix May Launch Its Own Video Podcasts
Netflix is developing its own exclusive video podcasts by engaging creators and updating its app, expanding beyond its recent Spotify partnership. The company is exploring short-term licensing deals with audio companies like iHeartMedia and SiriusXM to test the format's appeal on its platform. Th...
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Netflix to Stream Spotify Podcasts Starting in 2026
Netflix will integrate select Spotify video podcasts into its platform starting in the U.S. in early 2026, offering subscribers diverse entertainment like sports, culture, and true-crime shows. This partnership aims to expand distribution for podcasts and connect them with new global audiences, w...
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NBCUniversal's New Deal Brings YouTube TV, Peacock and Sports Together
NBCUniversal and YouTube TV have formed a multi-year partnership to bundle live sports, entertainment, and streaming services, ensuring subscribers retain access to NBCUniversal's channels and expanding content reach across Google's platforms. The agreement includes the revival of NBC Sports Netw...
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Google's Web Dominance: Why We Must Defend Independent Sites
Google's AI Overviews and chatbots are reducing traffic to independent websites by providing immediate answers, leading to significant revenue declines for publishers like WikiHow. Despite Google's role in creating this disruption, its ad tools and content licensing agreements provide essential s...
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The Silent Click: What Happens When Engagement Stops
AI assistants are causing a shift to "zero-click searches," which threatens traditional web revenue models like display advertising and affiliate marketing by reducing website traffic. This trend is leading to significant revenue loss for publishers, especially informational and subscription-base...
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Reddit Sues Perplexity Over Alleged Google Data Scraping
Reddit is suing four data firms, including Perplexity and SerpApi, for allegedly scraping its content via Google without permission to train AI models, seeking damages and injunctions. Google is tightening restrictions on data scraping and API access, while AI-generated summaries and zero-click s...
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Hollywood's AI Dilemma: An Industry in Crisis
A deep divide exists between Silicon Valley and Hollywood over AI's integration, with the entertainment industry facing a critical juncture as AI threatens business models and intellectual property rights. Tech leaders like OpenAI's Sam Altman promote AI as a creative tool for deeper audience eng...
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Track How AI Is Mentioning Your Brand
Generative AI systems like ChatGPT are creating a new discovery layer where brand visibility occurs before traditional analytics can track it, building upon but not replacing conventional SEO foundations. These AI platforms use unique citation methods that don't appear in standard analytics, crea...
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Top Podcasts Leave YouTube for Netflix
Netflix is securing exclusive video podcast rights through a partnership with iHeartMedia, directly challenging YouTube's dominance by removing full episodes of popular shows like *My Favorite Murder* from YouTube. This move is part of Netflix's strategy to diversify its content and create a uniq...
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Curiosity Stream Bets on AI Deals for 2027 Revenue Surge
Curiosity Stream has achieved profitability by licensing its science and educational content to AI developers, creating a new revenue stream distinct from traditional subscription models. The company, founded in 2015 by John Hendricks, reported its first profitable quarter in early 2025 and saw a...
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AI Costs Rising in 2026? 3 Ways to Save Money Now
Rising costs for AI services are driven by expensive DRAM memory chips, pressure on providers to monetize, and models generating longer, more verbose outputs. AI companies are passing on costs through higher API fees due to hardware inflation and expensive licensing deals for training data, while...
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AI's Threat to Publisher Revenue and Ads
Conversational AI tools like ChatGPT are reducing user clicks on ads and publisher websites, threatening the advertising-based revenue models of digital publishing and search engines. Publishers are experiencing significant traffic and revenue declines due to AI-generated summaries and zero-click...
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Reddit Sues Perplexity AI Over Content Scraping
Reddit is suing Perplexity AI and three data-scraping firms for industrial-scale copyright infringement, alleging they unlawfully bypassed protections to harvest user content without permission. Perplexity AI is accused of using these services to obtain Reddit data for its AI engine instead of pu...
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Netflix Originals Leaving in 2026: What's on the Chopping Block?
Many Netflix Originals have expiration dates due to temporary streaming rights, with over 100 titles scheduled for removal in 2026, challenging the assumption they are permanent. A wide range of content is affected, including animated favorites like *She-Ra* and *How to Train Your Dragon* series,...
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Cloudflare Blocked 416 Billion AI Bot Requests Since July
Cloudflare has blocked over 416 billion AI bot requests since July, revealing the massive scale of web data harvesting for AI training and a significant imbalance in access, with Google's crawlers reaching far more webpages than competitors like OpenAI. The situation creates a dilemma for publish...
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Customize Your NotebookLM Audio Overviews In-App: A Quick Guide
NotebookLM's mobile app has introduced enhanced customization for its Audio Overview tool, allowing users to adjust audio length and include guiding prompts for more tailored outputs. The update includes significant performance improvements, such as a 95% reduction in buffering times and easier a...
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NYT Sues Perplexity Over 'Verbatim' Copying of Articles
The New York Times has sued AI startup Perplexity, alleging its "answer engine" copies or closely mimics the newspaper's copyrighted articles, continuing a broader conflict between media and AI firms over content use. The lawsuit claims Perplexity's actions cause economic harm by creating substit...
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Alexa Plus Can Find That Movie Scene You're Thinking Of
Amazon has launched an AI feature for Fire TV that allows users to describe a movie scene to Alexa Plus and instantly jump to that exact moment, integrating with Prime Video. The technology uses advanced AI models to understand natural language queries, enabling it to find scenes based on descrip...
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Epic CEO: Steam Should Remove 'Made with AI' Labels
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney opposes mandatory "Made with AI" labels on platforms like Steam, arguing they will become meaningless as AI tools become standard in game development and are unnecessary for storefronts. Sweeney and other industry leaders, such as Nexon's CEO, support AI integration to ...
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Brands Unite to Monetize AI Training Data with New Licensing Standard
The Really Simple Licensing (RSL) framework offers publishers a structured way to monetize content used for AI training by embedding licensing and royalty terms directly into their materials. RSL is supported by a coalition of major publishers and aims to democratize compensation, moving beyond t...
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