AI licensing, made simple.™
Publishers built the web and filled it with valuable knowledge. AI is taking it all for free, supplanting search engines and leaving many sites starving for click revenue.
OpenRSL™ is an easy and flexible open-source toolkit for accountably monetizing your website’s AI traffic and usage.
Online publishers have been pushed from the stable old bargain…
Search engines index our website’s content and knowledge,
we get paid for the traffic and clicks.
to an unsustainable new wild west:
AI uses and recycles our site content,
we get nothing.
AI serves zero-click answers. Traffic and ad revenue disappear. There is no permission, no payment, and no attribution. Websites are scrambling for a viable business model.
A new bargain for publishers and AI:
AI uses licensed web data, publishers get metered recurring revenue.
Both sides need a flexible licensing deal infrastructure to support on-demand access to web data for models, agents and tools.
OpenRSL is that infrastructure. Our reference stack for publishers and web developers implements RSL (Really Simple Licensing) end to end: manifests, an OLP server, and libraries in Python, PHP, and TypeScript. These tools support protection and transformation of web data into licensable assets that AI can find, pay for and use.
To ensure long-term protection and revenue streams for their data assets, publishers must change (and control) the path of least resistance for AI when it crawls the web. Adoption of OpenRSL routes that secure path through each website with a streamlined integration process that preserves publisher agency in licensing the data.
For anyone publishing on the web, at any scale.
Independent creators
Bloggers, newsletter writers, niche publishers.
Small & mid-size publishers
Trade press, regional news, specialty media.
Enterprise & media networks
Wire services, archives, multi-brand groups.
OpenRSL empowers publishers on the new web to make choices: Earn from every post and newsletter AI ingests, or keep feeding the models for free. Monetize your archives and back catalogs, or lose readers to zero-click AI summaries. License millions of assets across every brand, or hand your wire and archives to AI for free.
Start simple. Go as far as you want.
Do nothing and AI keeps taking your content for free, with no record and no revenue. With OpenRSL you can stake your claim in minutes, then add accountability and payment when you’re ready. Three levels, one standard.
Declare your terms
Publish an rsl.xml manifest stating which uses are allowed and the price. Crawlers can read it. Nothing is enforced yet, but your terms are on the public record.
Make it accountable
Add the OLP token server, self-host it or Use PDS. Crawlers must accept your terms and present a signed ticket for the use they intend, so every request leaves an auditable trail.
Get paid
Connect a payment backend such as Stripe. Every licensed use settles automatically and issues a receipt.
A complete licensing lifecycle.
From the moment a publisher offers terms to the moment funds settle.
Publish
The publisher turns site content into discrete licensable units and publishes an rsl.xml manifest of the licenses on offer: which uses are allowed, which are not, and the price.
Discover + License
Crawlers discover the terms and initiate the license process.
Validate
The crawler accepts the publisher's license terms for its type of use, crawl, training, or inference, and the OLP endpoint issues a signed ticket.
Get Paid
The crawler presents the ticket via the CAP Authorization header. Funds settle. Receipt issued.
A public license, fetchable by anyone.
A standards-based file at a known location. Open spec, machine-readable.
It states the asset, the license types offered, and the price. Anyone can read it.
$ curl https://example.com/rsl.xml <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <rsl xmlns="https://rslstandard.org/rsl" xmlns:openrsl="https://openrsl.org/ns/extensions"> <content url="/article/the-old-deal" server="https://olp.example.com"> <license> <permits type="usage">ai-train</permits> <payment type="training"> <amount currency="USD">0.0040</amount> <openrsl:binding scheme="pds" ref="offer-abc-123"/> </payment> </license> </content> </rsl>
Every license, as it happens.
License it, or leave it.
Revenue
Paid every time your content is used. Each license is a transaction with a record, you see the money the moment it moves.
Control
Set the terms, change them any time. You decide what each piece of content is worth, and to whom.
Your call
License it, or leave it. If a buyer won’t agree to your terms, no license is granted. The choice stays with the publisher.
Permission, in writing, with a public record.
Every use of your content leaves a trace. The terms are public. The license is signed. The transaction is logged.
Crawlers identify themselves. Both sides walk away with a receipt.
› GET /robots.txt 200 · License: /rsl.xml › GET /rsl.xml 200 · 4 license types › POST /olp/token 201 · Ticket #a91f2c · Signed › GET /article/the-old-deal 200 · Authorization: License a91f2c
Built on the web you already use.
OpenRSL uses standards the web already runs on.
Where crawlers already look. The directive points to the license file.
Really Simple Licensing. The open standard for declaring terms.
How buyers acquire and present license tickets. The two HTTP sub-protocols RSL ships with.
How money settles. Supports pluggable adapters of external services. Ships with PDS licensing deals + Stripe payments as reference.
Open source. Open for participation.
RSL is the open standard. OpenRSL is the open-source toolkit that implements it directly under your control. Run your own deployment, ship a library, or help shape future versions.
A reference stack, end to end.
rsl.xml generation and the matching robots.txt directives. Add and remove assets as the site changes.
Reference Open Licensing Protocol server. Token issuance, asset gating, intent declaration.
Pluggable settlement layer. PDS is the reference target; the abstraction accepts other providers.
Publisher and crawler examples in each language under /examples.
Date-pinned notes around the RSL standard. The protocol itself lives upstream.
Sign up to receive updates on Release notes, spec changes, and other resources.
