Really Simple Licensing: Open content lice㎱㏌g standard for the AI-first Internet

Protect your content rights in the AI era #

RSL is an open standard that lets publishers define machine-readable licensing terms for their content, including attribution, pay per crawl, and pay per inference compensation.

<rsl xmlns="https://rslstandard.org/rsl">
  <content url="/">
    <license>
      <permits type="usage">ai-train</permits>
      <payment type="subscription">
        <!-- Using content for AI training requires custom license -->
        <custom>https://example.com/contact-form.html</custom>
      </payment>
    </license>
  </content>
</rsl>
<rsl xmlns="https://rslstandard.org/rsl">
  <content url="/">
    <license>
      <permits type="usage">all</permits>
      <payment type="attribution">
        <!-- Content available under CC attribution license -->
        <standard>https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</standard>
      </payment>
    </license>
  </content>
</rsl>

The open content licensing standard

for the AI-first Internet

Featured Supporters

Tim O’Reilly, CEO of O’Reilly Media

Today, as AI systems absorb and repurpose that same content without permission or compensation, the rules need to evolve. RSL builds directly on the legacy of RSS, providing the missing licensing layer for the AI-first Internet.

Neil Vogel, CEO People Inc.

Creators are essential to the success of the AI era and must be fairly compensated. RSL moves the industry forward—evolving from simply blocking unauthorized crawlers, to setting our licensing terms, for all AI use cases, at global web scale.

Enable AI and other technology companies to license content at internet scale through the RSL Open Licensing Protocol (OLP), eliminating manual negotiations and integrations.

<rsl xmlns="https://rslstandard.org/rsl">
  <!-- Using content requires obtaining license from an OLP server -->
  <content url="/videos" server="https://example-server.org/api">
    <license>
      ...
    </license>
  </content>
</rsl>

Collaborate with other content owners in negotiating collective licensing terms and building sustainable licensing ecosystems between content owners and AI companies.

<rsl xmlns="https://rslstandard.org/rsl">
  <content url="/" server="https://api.rslcollective.org">
    <license>
      <payment type="use">
        <!-- Using content requires obtaining RSL Collective license -->
        <standard>https://rslcollective.org/license</standard>
      </payment>
    </license>
  </content>
</rsl>
<rsl xmlns="https://rslstandard.org/rsl">
  <content url="/" server="https://api.rslcollective.org">
    <license>
      <payment type="attribution">
        <!-- Using content requires obtaining RSL Collective license -->
        <standard>https://rslcollective.org/license</standard>
      </payment>
    </license>
  </content>
</rsl>

Replace ad-hoc data integrations and passwords with an open, standards-based solution that encrypts and protects your proprietary content during transit.

<rsl xmlns="https://rslstandard.org/rsl">
  <!-- Decrypting EPUB content requires obtaining a license key -->
  <content url="/books/book1.epub.enc" encrypted="true"
           server="https://example-server.org/api">
    <license>
       ...
    </license>
  </content>
</rsl>

RSL integrates with RSS and Schema.org to enable publishers to create standards-based, machine-readable catalogs of their licensable content and datasets.

<rss xmlns:rsl="https://rslstandard.org/rsl" version="2.0">
  <channel>
    <title>Datasets - UCI Machine Learning Repository</title>
    <link>https://archive.ics.uci.edu/datasets</link>
    <item> 
      <title>Iris dataset</title> 
      <link>https://archive.ics.uci.edu/dataset/53/iris</link>
      <rsl:content url="https://archive.ics.uci.edu/public/53/iris.zip">
        <rsl:license>
          <rsl:payment type="free"/>
        </rsl:license>
      </rsl:content>
    </item>
  </channel>
</rss>

Join the GitHub discussion group to receive updates about RSL and share your support for RSL on Social Media:

Simon Wistow, Co-founder of Fastly

"The launch of the RSL Standard is a timely and necessary response to the shifting economics of the web. By making it easy for publishers to define and enforce licensing terms, RSL lays the foundation for a healthy content ecosystem."

Ricky Arai-Lopez, Head of Product, Quora

"Quora is proud to support the RSL Standard, which helps publishers set terms that work for them, serving as an important step towards a sustainable path for both industries to create mutual value and thrive together."