A group of technologists and publishers just rolled out Real Simple Licensing (RSL), a new protocol designed to let websites license their data to AI companies at massive scale. It’s a simple idea: make licensing as easy and machine-readable as RSS feeds, and maybe AI giants like OpenAI, Google, or Anthropic will finally have to pay for the content they’re sucking up. The catch? It only works if those AI companies actually agree to use it.
Key Points
- Reddit, Quora, and Yahoo are among the first big publishers backing RSL
- The protocol builds on the spirit of RSS with a standardized, machine-readable format
- The big question: will AI labs recognize and honor the system
RSL comes from Dave Winer, the co-creator of RSS, along with the newly formed RSL Collective, a group of web publishers and technologists pushing for adoption. The pitch is straightforward: sites can embed an RSL file that lays out what data is available, under what terms, and at what price. AI companies that want high-quality training data can crawl these files, see the terms, and pay up.
It’s a response to the messy, often hostile negotiations happening now between AI companies and publishers. Right now, deals happen one-on-one and usually behind closed doors. The New York Times is suing OpenAI. Reddit struck a deal with Google worth reportedly $60 million a year. But smaller sites have little leverage, and there’s no standard way to license data.
That’s what RSL is trying to change. By creating a clear, open standard, the system could make licensing as routine as serving ads or embedding analytics. It would let a blog, a mid-size media outlet, or a massive platform all declare their terms in the same way.
Of course, the success of RSL hinges entirely on whether AI companies decide it’s easier to play along than to ignore it. Right now, they can — and do — scrape the open web without paying. Courts are still sorting out whether that counts as fair use. Until there’s regulatory or legal pressure, it’s not obvious that tech giants will voluntarily start paying at scale.
Still, getting Reddit, Quora, and Yahoo onboard gives RSL some credibility out of the gate. If enough publishers adopt it, it could shift the balance of power, turning scattered negotiations into a structured marketplace. And if history is any guide, a simple standard can change the web — RSS itself made blogging and podcasting possible.