--- title: "RSL Collective: licensing intermediary profile | Agent Ready Crawlers" description: "RSL Collective: licensing intermediary profile covering RSL 1.0 standard and RSL Collective licensing platform. Read 2026-11-05." canonical: https://agentreadycrawlers.com/vendors/rsl-collective site: "Agent Ready Crawlers" last_updated: 2026-11-05 section: "Vendors" --- # RSL Collective: licensing intermediary profile | Agent Ready Crawlers > RSL Collective: licensing intermediary profile covering RSL 1.0 standard and RSL Collective licensing platform. Read 2026-11-05. Source: https://agentreadycrawlers.com/vendors/rsl-collective Site: Agent Ready Crawlers Last reviewed: 2026-11-05 Licensing intermediary # RSL Collective In short RSL Collective, a nonprofit that publishers join free, co-developed Really Simple Licensing, published as a Recommendation on 10 December 2025. The standard offers ai-all, ai-input and ai-index uses, so a site can accept search indexing yet decline AI answers, and a licence file can price a crawl through x402 over HTTP 402. Enforcement is left to CDNs and servers. Type [Licensing intermediary](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/vendors/by-type/licensing-intermediary/) Homepage [rslcollective.org](https://rslcollective.org) In one line Nonprofit collective rights organisation and co-developer of the RSL standard, a machine-readable license file a site links from robots.txt so crawlers can see, buy and prove a license for training, AI input, search or crawling. Last read 2026-11-05 ## What RSL Collective does for this layer ### From the vendor's own pages The RSL Technical Steering Committee published Really Simple Licensing 1.0 as a Recommendation on 2025-12-10, superseding version 0.9. ([rslstandard.org](https://rslstandard.org/rsl), dated 2025-12-10) The RSL Standard and the RSL Collective were announced together on 10 Sep 2025. ([rslstandard.org](https://rslstandard.org/press), dated 2025-09-10) RSL 1.0 builds on RSS and the Robots Exclusion Protocol (RFC 9309): a site adds a line such as "License: https://example.com/license.xml" to robots.txt, or points to the file from an HTTP Link header, an RSS feed or an HTML link element. ([rslstandard.org](https://rslstandard.org/rsl), dated 2025-12-10) RSL 1.0 defines three optional protocols on top of the core file: the Open License Protocol as an OAuth 2.0 extension for license tokens, the Crawler Authorization Protocol as an HTTP authorization scheme for licensed crawlers, and the Encrypted Media Standard. ([rslstandard.org](https://rslstandard.org/rsl), dated 2025-12-10) RSL clients must revalidate a license document according to its max-age and apply a default of 30 days when no max-age is given. ([rslstandard.org](https://rslstandard.org/rsl), dated 2025-12-10) The RSL 1.0 specification shows a pay-per-crawl license whose accepts element names the x402 protocol (media type application/x402+json), with prices settled through an HTTP 402 Payment Required exchange. ([rslstandard.org](https://rslstandard.org/rsl), dated 2025-12-10) RSL 1.0 added the usage categories ai-all, ai-input and ai-index, so a publisher can allow search indexing while refusing use in AI search answers. ([rslstandard.org](https://rslstandard.org/press/rsl-1-specification-2025), dated 2025-12-10) RSL 1.0 added a "contribution" payment option built with Creative Commons as the first application of its CC signals work, letting noncommercial publishers ask AI systems for monetary or in-kind contributions. ([rslstandard.org](https://rslstandard.org/press/rsl-1-specification-2025), dated 2025-12-10) The RSL Collective's sample collective license points crawlers to the license server https://api.rslcollective.org and pays publishers per AI output under the standard license at rslcollective.org/license. ([rslcollective.org](https://rslcollective.org/)) The RSL Collective describes itself as a nonprofit rights organisation that publishers join for free, with the RSL standard as the basis for collective licensing and bargaining with AI companies. ([rslcollective.org](https://rslcollective.org/about)) ### Claims the vendor makes about itself The RSL 1.0 announcement says Cloudflare, Akamai, Creative Commons and IAB Tech Lab support the standard and that more than 1,500 media organisations, brands and technology companies endorse it. ([rslstandard.org](https://rslstandard.org/press/rsl-1-specification-2025), dated 2025-12-10) ## Products and plans | Product | What it does | Price model | From | As of | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | RSL 1.0 standard | XML license vocabulary plus robots.txt, HTTP header, RSS and HTML discovery, with optional OLP, CAP and EMS protocols. | open standard specification free to read and implement | USD 0 | 2026-11-05 | | RSL Collective licensing platform | Collective license and license server that collects pay-per-output royalties from AI companies for member publishers. | free to join for publishers royalty split not published on the homepage | USD 0 | 2026-11-05 | ## Standards | Standard | Status | Evidence | | --- | --- | --- | | RFC 9309 (robots.txt) | Supports | RSL extends robots.txt with a License: directive and cites RFC 9309 as its base. (rslstandard.org) | | Web Bot Auth | No statement | Crawler identity in RSL runs through OLP license tokens and the Crawler Authorization Protocol; the spec does not cite Web Bot Auth (checked 2026-11-05). | | Content Signals | No statement | The RSL 1.0 specification and announcement name CC signals, not Cloudflare's Content-Signals policy (checked 2026-11-05). | ## Our checks | Check | Result | Method | Date | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Homepage fetch | HTTP 200 | GET with the crawl user agent after a robots.txt check | 2026-11-05 | ## What RSL Collective does not do - RSL does not enforce anything by itself; a crawler that ignores robots.txt also ignores its License: line unless a CDN or server blocks it. - The RSL Collective homepage gives no royalty rates or revenue split for publishers (read 2026-11-05). ## Reading notes rslstandard.org hosts the specification and the press page, while rslcollective.org hosts the nonprofit and its licence server. Fastly's support is cited by the RSL press page, which links a Fastly blog post of 10 September 2025. ## Related pages on this site - [All licensing intermediaries](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/vendors/by-type/licensing-intermediary/) 8 profiles - [The full vendor list](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/vendors/) 73 profiles in four types - [Cloudflare](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/vendors/cloudflare/) bot management - [Akamai (Bot & Agent Control)](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/vendors/akamai/) bot management - [Fastly (Bot Management, AI Bot Management)](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/vendors/fastly/) bot management ## Sources - [rslcollective.org](https://rslcollective.org) read 2026-11-05 - [Really Simple Licensing (RSL) 1.0 Specification](https://rslstandard.org/rsl) read 2026-11-05 - [RSL press and announcements](https://rslstandard.org/press) read 2026-11-05 - [RSL AI Licensing 1.0 Now an Official Industry Standard](https://rslstandard.org/press/rsl-1-specification-2025) read 2026-11-05 - [RSL Collective homepage](https://rslcollective.org/) read 2026-11-05 - [About the RSL Collective](https://rslcollective.org/about) read 2026-11-05 Last reviewed 2026-11-05