# RSL

> Machine-readable content-licensing terms, referenced from robots.txt — say which AI uses are free and which require a license or royalty.

_The Agent Protocol Atlas · /protocols/rsl · [JSON](/api/protocols/rsl) · [all The Agent Protocol Atlas](/protocols)_

- **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:** — (verify-against-primary-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:** —
- **adoption_metric:** 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)
- **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
License: https://example.com/license.xml

<!-- license.xml -->
<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