{
  "dataset": "protocols",
  "record": {
    "id": "rsl",
    "name": "RSL",
    "full_name": "Really Simple Licensing",
    "layer": "licensing",
    "creator": "RSL Collective (Reddit, Yahoo, Medium, O'Reilly and others)",
    "status": "emerging standard",
    "year": 2025,
    "one_liner": "Machine-readable content-licensing terms, referenced from robots.txt — say which AI uses are free and which require a license or royalty.",
    "spec_url": "https://rslstandard.org",
    "snippet": "robots.txt:  License: https://example.com/license.xml   →   <rsl> ... <permits>search</permits> ... </rsl>",
    "abbreviation": "RSL",
    "also_known_as": [
      "Really Simple Licensing",
      "RSL Standard"
    ],
    "canonical_spec_url": "https://rslstandard.org",
    "entity_uri": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Really_Simple_Licensing",
    "taxonomy_layer": "licensing",
    "sub_layer": "content-licensing-terms",
    "protocol_type": "license",
    "central_problem": "Lets publishers attach machine-readable licensing terms to content — declaring which AI uses are free and which require a license or royalty — referenced from robots.txt.",
    "maintainer": "RSL Collective (nonprofit; co-founded by Eckart Walther and Doug Leeds)",
    "governance_body": "RSL Collective",
    "license": {
      "value": null,
      "verify_status": "verify-against-primary-at-build",
      "source_hint": "https://rslstandard.org",
      "note": "Confirm the spec's own license/terms at build."
    },
    "maturity_tag": "emerging",
    "current_spec_version": "RSL 1.0",
    "spec_date": "2025-12-10",
    "launch_date": "2025-09-10",
    "last_verified": "2026-06-15",
    "transport": "robots.txt License: directive → RSL XML license document",
    "core_mechanism": "A site references an RSL license document (XML) from robots.txt via a License: directive; the RSL document declares per-use permissions (e.g. search vs. training) and any royalty/licensing requirement, with RSL 1.0 adding dynamic pricing and collective-rights-organization integration.",
    "discovery_endpoint": "robots.txt License: directive → RSL XML (e.g. /license.xml)",
    "settlement_type": null,
    "adoption_metric": {
      "value": "Launch backed by publishers including Reddit, Yahoo, People Inc., Internet Brands, Ziff Davis, Quora, O'Reilly Media, and Medium",
      "source": "https://rslstandard.org/press/rsl-standard",
      "last_verified": "2026-06-15"
    },
    "notable_adopters": [
      {
        "value": "Reddit",
        "source": "https://rslstandard.org/press/rsl-standard"
      },
      {
        "value": "Yahoo",
        "source": "https://rslstandard.org/press/rsl-standard"
      },
      {
        "value": "O'Reilly Media",
        "source": "https://rslstandard.org/press/rsl-standard"
      }
    ],
    "relationships": [
      {
        "predicate": "enforced_by",
        "target": "web-bot-auth",
        "note": "RSL -enforced_by-> Cloudflare (research §2 seed triple); enforcement in practice depends on verifying which agent is real (Web Bot Auth). Cloudflare is the enforcing operator, not a protocol record id."
      },
      {
        "predicate": "competes_with",
        "target": "pay-per-crawl",
        "note": "RSL and pay-per-crawl both price/gate AI access in the licensing layer (pay-per-crawl is not a separate record in this 12-record pass)."
      }
    ],
    "ideal_use_case": "A publisher who wants to license content to AI — free for some uses, paid for others — in a machine-readable way.",
    "when_to_use": "When you must price or gate AI use of your content and want terms that crawlers and licensing intermediaries can read automatically.",
    "when_not_to_use": "When you simply want to welcome agents to read your content (Layer-1 discovery) and have no licensing or royalty requirement.",
    "code_example": "# robots.txt\nLicense: https://example.com/license.xml\n\n<!-- license.xml -->\n<rsl><content url=\"/\"><permits>search</permits><prohibits>train</prohibits></content></rsl>",
    "source": "First published 2025-09-10; RSL 1.0 official spec 2025-12-10: https://rslstandard.org/press/rsl-1-specification-2025 and https://rslstandard.org/press/rsl-standard . Enforced_by Cloudflare: research §2.",
    "agent_readiness_link": "access-economics",
    "layer_legacy": "content"
  }
}