The open licensing layer for AI on the web

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.

Click here to get started

Click here for open-source code

AI broke the web.

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.

Introducing OpenRSL

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 establish channels for long-term protection and monetization of their content, publishers must change (and control) the path of least resistance for AI when it crawls the web. OpenRSL creates that secure path through each website with a streamlined integration process that catalogs its data assets and preserves publisher agency in licensing them.

For anyone publishing on the web, at any scale

Independent creators

Bloggers, newsletter writers, niche publishers.

Earn from every post and newsletter AI ingests.

Small & mid-size publishers

Trade press, regional news, specialty media.

Monetize new content and back catalog archives.

Enterprise & media networks

Wire services, archives, multi-brand groups.

License millions of assets across every brand.

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.

Start simple. Go as far as you want

Do nothing and AI keeps taking your content for free, with no record and no compensation. Use OpenRSL to declare your initial licensing terms, then add accountability and actual payments later on.

LEVEL 1 · RSL BASIC

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.

LEVEL 2 · AUDITABLE

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.

LEVEL 3 · SETTLEMENT

Get paid

Connect a payment backend such as Stripe or hosted PDS. Each licensed use places a hold that your backend captures into a payout, and every transaction is recorded.

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 assets 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.

Acquire

The crawler accepts the publisher's license terms for its type of use (crawl, training, or use), and the OLP endpoint issues a signed ticket.

Get Paid

The crawler presents the ticket via the CAP Authorization header. The origin serves the content and the transaction is logged; the held funds settle through the connected payment backend.

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.

example.com, license

$ 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 when your content is used. Each license is a transaction with an auditable record; funds settle through your connected payment backend.

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 an auditable record.

crawler.log, every request, on the record

› GET /robots.txt                           200 · License: /rsl.xml
› GET /rsl.xml                              200 · 3 license types
› POST /token                               200 · Ticket #a91f2c · Signed
› GET /article/the-old-deal                 200 · Authorization: License a91f2c

Signed. Logged. Auditable.

Built on the web you already use

OpenRSL uses 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.

payment provider

How payment is backed. A pluggable adapter seam for external providers. Ships with PDS and Stripe as hold-only reference adapters.

Open source. Open for participation

RSL is the open standard for declaring licensing terms to AI crawlers. 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.

Independent creators