In a groundbreaking move for the future of content on the internet, a coalition of major tech companies and publishers including Reddit, Quora and Medium have launched a new initiative called the Really Simple Licensing (RSL) Standard, alongside the formation of a nonprofit organization called the RSL Collective.
Together, these efforts aim to ensure that digital publishers and creators are fairly compensated when their work is used by AI systems, many of which have been training on available web content.
The RLS standard is a new, open, and machine-readable protocol that allows websites to specify how their content can be used by AI systems. Inspired by the original RSS (Really Simple Syndication) format that helped power the early web, RSL extends that philosophy into today’s AI-driven internet. Alongside it is RSL Collective nonprofit designed to help publishers pool their rights and negotiate collectively, similar to how ASCAP or BMI work in the music industry. It offers a free, non-exclusive way for creators and publishers to band together to seek fair compensation and terms for how their content is used.
Where older tools like robots.txt could only block or allow crawlers, the RSL standard introduces a licensing layer. This means publishers can now set clear rules around:
- Whether their content can be used at all by AI applications
- How they should be credited
- Whether they expect compensation and how
RSL lets publishers add structured metadata to their sites that AI crawlers can automatically read and follow. Key features include:
- Licensing options: Free, attribution-required, subscription-based, pay-per-crawl, or pay-per-inference
- Encryption support for licensing non-public or paywalled content
- Standardized metadata via RSS and Schema.org integration
- Collective licensing infrastructure through the nonprofit RSL Collective
Any publisher can start using RSL immediately. There is no cost to adopt the protocol, and implementation can scale across websites, datasets, video content, books, and more.
As AI continues to transform industries, it increasingly relies on the wealth of human-created content available on the web. Until now, much of that data has been used without consent or compensation—a practice that many in the publishing world say is unsustainable.
Whether you’re managing your own content, building AI tools, or serving clients who create digital assets, RSL’s launch marks a significant turning point in how the web interfaces with AI
To get started or learn more, visit the RSL standard website, or RSL Collective’s official organization site here.
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