RSL (Really Simple Licensing)
An open standard for machine-readable content-licensing terms, referenced from robots.txt, that tells AI systems how content may be used and at what price.
- term
- RSL (Really Simple Licensing)
- category
- commerce
- short_def
- An open standard for machine-readable content-licensing terms, referenced from robots.txt, that tells AI systems how content may be used and at what price.
- long_def
- Really Simple Licensing (RSL) launched on 10 September 2025, backed by Reddit, Yahoo, Medium and People Inc. among others. It defines license models — free, attribution, subscription, pay-per-crawl, pay-per-inference — in an XML file referenced from robots.txt, so AI crawlers can read the terms before using content.
- see_also
- —
- etymology_origin
- Launched 10 September 2025 by the RSL Collective.
- related_to
- —
- contrast_with
- RSL states the licensing TERMS; Cloudflare pay-per-crawl is one mechanism that ENFORCES payment — RSL can name pay-per-crawl as a license model.
- example
- A publisher publishes an RSL file declaring pay-per-inference licensing for its archive.
- source
- https://rslstandard.org/press/rsl-standard
- status
- emerging
- why_it_matters
- The emerging neutral standard for AI content licensing — the 'terms' layer of access economics.
- sameAs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Really_Simple_Licensing- bridge_entity
- /access-economics
- last_verified
- 2026-06-15
- md_twin
- /glossary/rsl.md