After Anthropic’s $1.5 billion copyright settlement, the AI industry is confronting a reckoning over its use of training data. With more than 40 lawsuits still pending — including one targeting Midjourney for generating images of Superman — the risks of unlicensed data collection are mounting. Without a scalable licensing framework, experts warn, AI companies could soon be buried under a wave of litigation that might stall the sector’s growth. Reports Technology News
In response, a coalition of technologists and web publishers has introduced a new system designed to enable data licensing at internet scale. Dubbed Real Simple Licensing (RSL), the initiative is already winning support from major publishers including Reddit, Quora, and Yahoo. The big question is whether that momentum will be enough to draw the leading AI labs to the negotiating table.
Eckart Walther, RSL’s co-founder and co-creator of the RSS standard, says the project is about establishing clear, machine-readable licensing agreements for online content. “That’s really what RSL solves,” he told TechCrunch.
While industry groups like the Dataset Providers Alliance have long advocated for transparent data collection, RSL marks the first real attempt to create both the technical and legal scaffolding to make it work. On the technical side, the RSL Protocol allows publishers to encode specific licensing terms directly into their sites, typically via the “robots.txt” file. These terms can range from Creative Commons provisions to bespoke agreements with AI firms, making it simple to see what content can and cannot be used for training.
On the legal side, the RSL Collective functions like a music rights organization, negotiating licenses and collecting royalties on behalf of rightsholders. Much like ASCAP in music or MPLC in film, the collective offers licensors a centralized point of contact while giving publishers a streamlined way to enforce their terms across multiple AI companies.
So far, a broad roster of publishers has joined the effort. Yahoo, Reddit, Medium, O’Reilly Media, Ziff Davis (owner of Mashable and CNET), Internet Brands (owner of WebMD), People Inc., and The Daily Beast are all part of the RSL Collective. Others, including Fastly, Quora, and Adweek, are backing the standard even without formally signing on.
