Haven’t AI crawlers been blatantly ignoring any and all permissions whatsoever? What makes anyone think a license that mentions them will change anything?
This gives legal backing to any lawsuits against ai companies.
Currently everything on the Internet is assumed to be free. Robots.txt is just a suggestion and not legally enforceable. I assume RSL is supposed to communicate terms of use explicitly, like a EULA.
It’s like open source licenses on github. Sure you can access the source, but here are the rules you have to follow. Yes, a lot of companies still ignore it, notably GNU licensed software has been abused by the likes of Apple.
Currently everything on the Internet is assumed to be free. Robots.txt is just a suggestion and not legally enforceable. I assume RSL is supposed to communicate terms of use explicitly, like a EULA.
Robots is just a suggestion and so is this because scaraper never cared about legality of things. All this thing does is make license more easily accessible but consequently, do we want to make it easy for them in the first place? Make scrapers work for it.
Currently everything on the Internet is assumed to be free.
This isn’t true at all. Content on websites is protected by copyright laws as well.
Oooh, ok. I hope it helps then!
Exactly this. I doubt the effectiveness of a measure like this. Without enforcement, explicit and public cooperation from AI scrapers, consequences/accountability, and legal backing, it’s just theater.
The equivalent of a strongly worded letter.
From the zdnet article linked in another comment:
tech is one thing; business is another. That’s where the RSL Collective comes in. Modeled on music’s ASCAP and BMI, the nonprofit is essentially a rights-management clearinghouse for publishers and creators. Join for free, pool your rights, and let the Collective negotiate with AI companies to ensure you’re compensated.
I guess this is the body that will be leading the enforcement/bringing the consequences
It’s complementary to robots.txt.
- It’s weird that it’s XML, in 2025.
- It’s weird that it doesn’t use the .well-known/ prefix which has trended in the last decade for placement of files like this.
- It’s weird that it canonically uses the generic “license.xml” file name instead of “license.rsl” or “rsl.xml” or something that more clearly indicates its semantics.
But I do like the idea of having some widely adopted conventional way of expressing, in unambiguous terms, which usages are expressly prohibited, and that AI training is among them.
What’s wrong with XML ? You use HTML, right ?
Well it looks like another paywall / DRM gateway for knowledge that is not opensource. The only open thing they have is .org domain.
Is this a robot.txt alternative?
Basically. It has an authentication layer. Will watch with interest to see how adoption goes.
“several heavyweight publishers and tech companies – Reddit, Yahoo, People, O’Reilly Media, Medium, and Ziff Davis (ZDNET’s parent company) – have developed a response: the Really Simple Licensing (RSL) standard.”
