<div id="readability-page-1"><figure>  <img src="https://imageproxy.pbkrs.com/https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/STK414_AI_CVIRGINIA_2_C.jpg/query-Y3JvcD0wLDAsMTAwLDEwMCZxdWFsaXR5PTkwJnN0cmlwPWFsbA?x-oss-process=image/auto-orient,1/interlace,1/resize,w_1440,h_1440/quality,q_95/format,jpg" width="2040" height="1360" original-src="https://imageproxy.pbkrs.com/https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/STK414_AI_CVIRGINIA_2_C.jpg/query-Y3JvcD0wLDAsMTAwLDEwMCZxdWFsaXR5PTkwJnN0cmlwPWFsbA"/>  <figcaption>   </figcaption> </figure> <p>An open licensing standard that aims to make AI companies pay for the content they vacuum up across the web is now an official specification. Really Simple Licensing 1.0 - or RSL for short - gives publishers the ability to dictate licensing and compensation rules to the web crawlers that visit their sites.</p> <p>The RSL Collective announced the standard in September with backing from Yahoo, Ziff Davis, and O'Reilly Media. It's an expansion of the robots.txt file, which outlines the parts of a website a web crawler can access. Though RSL alone can't block AI scrapers that don't pay for a license, the web infrastructure providers that support the s …</p> <p>Read the full story at The Verge.</p></div>

<p>A new open licensing standard, Really Simple Licensing 1.0 (RSL), has been officially launched to require AI companies to pay for web content they scrape. Supported by Yahoo, Ziff Davis, and O'Reilly Media, RSL allows publishers to set licensing and compensation rules for web crawlers. It expands on the robots.txt file but cannot block non-paying AI scrapers alone.</p>

A pay-to-scrape AI licensing standard is now official