San Francisco, CA, Dec. 10, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --
- Leading internet infrastructure and standards organizations, including Cloudflare, Akamai, Creative Commons, and the IAB Tech Lab, announce support for RSL 1.0
- Publisher endorsement grows with the addition of The Associated Press, Vox Media, USA Today, Boston Globe Media, BuzzFeed, Stack Overflow, Arena Group (The Street, Parade, Men’s Journal, Athlon Sports), Mansueto Group (Inc., Fast Company), The Guardian, and Slate – joining hundreds more high-quality publishers and media brands
- 1500+ media organizations, brands, and technology companies worldwide now endorse RSL; support spans billions of web pages, representing most high-quality internet content used in AI foundation model training
Today, the RSL Technical Steering Committee, comprised of leading Internet, media, and technology companies, announced the publication of the official standards specification for Really Simple Licensing (RSL) 1.0, the first licensing standard to protect content in the AI era.
Developed as a collaborative effort between the RSL Collective and a broad community of publishers, platforms, and open standards organizations, including Yahoo, Ziff Davis, and O’Reilly Media, RSL 1.0 is an industry-first, open web standard for publishers and creators to define transparent, machine-readable usage and licensing terms for the content on which AI systems rely to fuel future innovation.
Based on the widely adopted RSS (Really Simple Syndication) standard, RSL 1.0 augments the simple yes/no blocking rules of robots.txt with a universal language for content rights and licensing terms, offering a scalable economic foundation for the AI-first Internet. Today’s release includes additional capabilities for publishers, including giving search engines permission to include content in search results while opting out of AI search applications, as well as being able to mandate monetary or in-kind contributions from AI systems that benefit from noncommercial content or data.
“Today’s release of RSL 1.0 marks an inflection point for the open internet,” said Eckart Walther, Chair of the RSL Technical Steering Committee. “RSL establishes clarity, transparency, and the foundation for new economic frameworks for publishers and AI systems, ensuring that internet innovation can continue to flourish, underpinned by clear, accountable content rights.”
“For anyone whose livelihood comes from publishing content online, RSL 1.0 is a no-brainer,” said Doug Leeds, co-CEO and co-founder of the RSL Collective, a nonprofit collective rights organization for digital creators and joint developer of RSL 1.0. “This is why it is drawing such broad support from every corner of the internet ecosystem, from major news and media companies to the web's most important infrastructure and standards organizations that define and enforce how the web works.”
RSL 1.0 New Capabilities Include:
Enhanced control over content use in AI search applications: RSL 1.0 defines additional content usage categories “ai-all”, “ai-input”, and “ai-index,” to give publishers finer control over dictating how content may be used in AI-related activities, including granting search engines permission to include content in search results while opting out of AI search applications.
Contribution-based licensing to protect the Digital Commons: RSL 1.0 includes a new "contribution" payment option to strengthen the noncommercial publishing ecosystem underpinning the billions of web pages, code repositories, and data sets of what’s known as the digital commons—the shared pool of freely available knowledge and creative work on the internet.
Developed in collaboration with the nonprofit Creative Commons, RSL 1.0’s contribution-based licensing is the first application of the CC signals initiative created to recognize and support the reciprocity powering the commons in the age of AI. Creators and nonprofits can now mandate monetary or in-kind contributions from AI systems that benefit from their work, without closing access or undermining open collaboration.
“By including contribution and attribution options, RSL helps protect the creative and knowledge commons that make the internet valuable to everyone,” said Anna Tumadóttir, CEO of Creative Commons. “It is imperative that fair sharing options beyond commercial licensing are readily available so that we can continue to sustain the commons and protect access to knowledge in the AI era.”
Broad Industry Support
RSL 1.0 has been met with a groundswell of support from leading publishers, platforms, content delivery networks, nonprofits, and industry bodies committed to building a more sustainable internet economy in the age of AI. Collective RSL support represents the majority of the billions of high-quality US web pages fueling today’s AI platforms.
"Machine-readable licensing will be an important feature for the future of the web, and we're excited to support RSL and their efforts," said Will Allen, VP of Product, Cloudflare. "Cloudflare customers process over a billion payment requests daily via HTTP 402 responses. Being able to include a custom, standard license in these responses will be extremely valuable for our customers."
“As AI-driven automation grows, publishers need clear, enforceable ways to signal how their content should be accessed and used,” said Eric Graham, VP of Product Management, Application Security, Akamai Technologies. “RSL represents meaningful momentum toward that future, and Akamai is committed to helping publishers uphold the controls, rights, and protections they put in place.”
"The RSL 1.0 standard seeks to bridge the gap between content creators and AI providers," said Vivek Shah, Chief Executive Officer of Ziff Davis. "It ensures that as we embrace new technologies, we are also protecting the integrity of original work, creating a transparent marketplace that benefits everyone."
“The long-term health of the digital advertising ecosystem depends on strong, sustainable content businesses,” said Shailley Singh, COO and EVP, Product at IAB Tech Lab. “RSL gives publishers a consistent way to express how their work can be used by AI systems, strengthening trust, accountability, and economic alignment across the industry.”
“The rise of Generative AI has dramatically redefined the information ecosystem, and with it, the very nature of the web. As a new set of Internet business models emerge, businesses need to understand that human knowledge and its creation, curation, and validation are as valuable (or more so) than ever. The new success metrics aren't about eyeballs or clicks; they're about reach, trust, attribution, and influence. We are proud to endorse RSL 1.0 and join the RSL Collective that supports these principles. This is about more than just a citation; it's about making sure the human creators who are fueling this new era are recognized and respected,” said Prashanth Chandrasekar, CEO of Stack Overflow.
“Boston Globe Media is proud to support the new Really Simple Licensing (RSL) Standard and partner with the RSL Collective, as we believe in the importance of high-quality journalism and proper compensation for the work that goes into producing it,” said Marc Choquette, Director, SEO at Boston Globe Media. “By embracing this streamlined, transparent approach to content licensing, we look forward to fostering greater industry collaboration and making it easier for publishers, creators, and audiences to both create and access impactful journalism.”
"RSL brings order to a chaotic moment. It gives media companies the control they’ve been missing in the AI era, and Supertab is the engine that turns that control into a monetization layer for the entire industry,” said Cosmin Ene, Founder and CEO of Supertab. “Our job with Supertab’s managed RSL server is to remove every barrier to adoption and make publishers RSL-compliant.”
About the RSL Standard
The Really Simple Licensing (RSL) standard is an open, collaborative initiative dedicated to defining standardized, machine-readable building blocks for expressing content licensing and compensation rules for how content is accessed and processed for Artificial Intelligence (AI) model development, deployment, and use. The direction and evolution of the RSL Standard is guided by the RSL Technical Steering Committee, with input from a broad community of publishers, platforms, and open standards organizations.
To learn more about the RSL licensing standard, visit https://rslstandard.org. To view RSL standard supporters or get involved, visit https://rslstandard.org/about.
About the RSL Collective
The RSL Collective is a nonprofit collective rights organization and technology platform, supported by leading Internet companies, with a mission to protect the value of human creativity online by leveraging the RSL Standard to ensure that the millions of online creators and publishers are fairly compensated when AI companies use their work.
The RSL Collective is led by Doug Leeds, former CEO IAC Publishing, Ask.com, and Eckart Walther, former CEO Cardspring, product executive Uber, Twitter, Yahoo, and co-creator of the RSS standard.
To learn more about the RSL Collective or join for free, visit https://rslcollective.org. To view RSL Collective supporters, visit https://rslcollective.org/about.
