Reddit, Quora, and Yahoo back a new open source licensing protocol RSL, to give AI firms a legal, transparent way to train on online data.
Reddit, Quora, Yahoo, and several other publishers have introduced Really Simple Licensing (RSL), an open, decentralised protocol designed to regulate AI data scraping. The protocol aims to provide AI companies like Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI a legal way to use online data for training models without facing lawsuits.
The move comes amid mounting legal battles. AI companies have been accused of scraping data without consent, with Anthropic recently settling a copyright lawsuit with book authors for $1.5 billion. More than a dozen lawsuits are still pending in US courts against Google, Midjourney, and others.
Developed by the non-profit RSL Collective, RSL is built on the familiar Really Simple Syndication (RSS) standard. Like RSS, it can process diverse content types — from web pages and books to datasets and videos — at scale. Its machine-readable design enables automated crawlers to process licensing terms without manual oversight.
Despite its promise, no AI company has yet agreed to adopt the licensing terms. “We need to have machine-readable licensing agreements for the internet. That’s really what RSL solves,” said Eckart Walther, Co-founder of RSL Collective. Co-founder Doug Leeds also backs the initiative, which has gained early support from publishers such as Medium, Mashable, CNET, and WebMD.
The tension between AI companies and publishers remains high. Google’s AI Overview feature has drawn criticism for displaying AI-generated summaries above search results, which publishers claim has significantly reduced their web traffic. While groups like the Dataset Providers Alliance previously called for transparent data practices, RSL is the first attempt at a licensing framework that could work at real-world scale.
By positioning itself as an ‘RSS for AI licensing,’ RSL underlines its open source DNA. Whether the initiative can gain traction depends on AI giants’ willingness to adopt a system designed for transparency and legal clarity.
