An open licensing layer for the web

AI licensing, made simple.^™

Publishers built the web. AI is taking it all for free, supplanting search engines and leaving many sites starving for click revenue. OpenRSL is an open-source toolkit for accountably monetizing AI traffic: a price, a license, and a paper trail for every usage.

AI broke the web

The deal for publishers went from a stable business model…

Search engines index our content,
we get traffic.

to the wild west of today:

AI uses and recycles our content,
we get nothing.

AI serves zero-click answers. Traffic disappears. There is no permission, no payment, and no attribution. Paywalls abound, but the cracks are deep.

Introducing OpenRSL

A new deal for publishers and AI:

You use our content,
we get recurring revenue.

OpenRSL is the reference stack that implements RSL (Really Simple Licensing) end to end: manifests, an OLP server, and libraries in Python, PHP, and TypeScript.

For anyone publishing on the web, at any scale.

Independent creators

Bloggers, newsletter writers, niche publishers.

Drop-in libraries, PHP, Python, TypeScript.

Small & mid-size publishers

Trade press, regional news, specialty media.

Per-article pricing, audit-ready logs.

Enterprise & media networks

Wire services, archives, multi-brand groups.

Self-host the OLP server, integrate via library.

A complete licensing lifecycle.

From the moment a publisher offers terms to the moment funds settle.

Publish

Publisher generates an rsl.xml manifest: which uses are allowed, which are not, and the price.

Discover + License

robots.txt points to the manifest. Crawlers discover it the same way they discover anything else.

Validate

A crawler requests a ticket from the OLP endpoint, declaring its intent: crawl, training, inference.

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.

No login. No gatekeeper.

example.com, license

$ curl https://example.com/rsl.xml
 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rsl xmlns="https://rsl.org/v1">
  <asset uri="/article/the-old-deal">
    <license type="ai-train">
      <price currency="USD">0.0040</price>
      <unit>per-token</unit>
    </license>
    <license type="ai-summarize">
      <price currency="USD">0.02</price>
      <unit>per-request</unit>
    </license>
    <contact>license@example.com</contact>
  </asset>
</rsl>

A real file. A real fetch. No SDK required.

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 you.

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.

If a question is raised a year from now, the answer is already on the record.

Crawlers identify themselves. Both sides walk away with a receipt.

crawler.log, every request, on the record

› 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

Signed. Logged. Auditable.

Built on the web you already use.

No new networks. Nothing proprietary. OpenRSL composes standards the web already runs on.

robots.txt

Where crawlers already look. The directive points to the license file.

RSL

Really Simple Licensing. The open standard for declaring terms.

OLP / CAP

How buyers acquire and present license tickets. The two HTTP sub-protocols RSL ships with.

Your payment provider

How money settles. Pluggable adapters, PDS as the reference target, paying out to real bank accounts.

Open source. Open for participation.

RSL is the open standard. OpenRSL is the open-source toolkit that implements it, early, in the open, and ready for contribution. Run your own deployment, ship a library, or help shape what’s still being figured out.

Independent creators