Everyday AI Podcast – An AI and ChatGPT Podcast

EP 618: RSL vs. the AI Scrape: Can LLM licensing save the open web?

32 snips
Sep 25, 2025
Guest
Doug Leeds
Doug Leeds, co-founder of Really Simple Licensing (RSL) and a former publishing executive, discusses the pressing threat AI scraping poses to the open web. He highlights how publishers have seen their traffic plummet due to AI-generated content and explores RSL's potential to create a fair licensing framework. Leeds explains the benefits of a collective rights organization like RSL, which can help both publishers and AI companies thrive. The conversation pivots on the need for sustainable web content access and restoring balance in the digital ecosystem.
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INSIGHT

AI Answers Threaten Publisher Traffic

  • AI answers reduce direct traffic to publishers by giving users answers without clicks.
  • That threatens the economic model that funds human-created web content.
ANECDOTE

From Ask.com To Major Publisher Holdings

  • Doug Leeds described building a large media group from Ask.com assets including Investopedia and About.com.
  • He used that experience to explain publishers' reliance on search-driven traffic and monetization.
INSIGHT

RSL Adds Machine‑Readable License Signals

  • Really Simple Licensing (RSL) is a machine-readable standard to declare license terms on the web.
  • It embeds licensing signals (e.g., in robots.txt) so crawlers can know permitted uses programmatically.
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