SMRTR AISep 10, 2025Ars Technica

Pay-per-output? AI firms blindsided by beefed up robots.txt instructions.

SMRTR summary

Major websites like Reddit, Yahoo, and Medium have introduced "Really Simple Licensing" (RSL), an open protocol expanding robots.txt to include licensing terms for AI companies using their content. RSL offers compensation models such as pay-per-crawl and pay-per-inference. Founded by former executives from Ask.com and Yahoo, RSL addresses publishers' traffic decline issues and AI companies' need for fresh content. Publishers can implement RSL immediately, with enforcement through technical measures and potential legal action.

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