Really Simple Licensing (RSL) vs Text and Data Mining Reservation Protocol (TDMRep)
The map lists them as complementary: sites and agents commonly implement both.
| Really Simple Licensing RSL | Text and Data Mining Reservation Protocol TDMRep | |
|---|---|---|
| Lifecycle step | 3 Permit: What may the agent do here? | 3 Permit: What may the agent do here? |
| Answers | What machine-readable license, price, and authorization terms govern how AI systems and crawlers may access or reuse a publisher's content? | Has a rights holder reserved text-and-data-mining rights over this content, and what policy governs any permitted mining? |
| Governed by | RSL Collective, a vendor consortium; issue tracker at github.com/rslstandard/rsl | W3C Text and Data Mining Reservation Protocol Community Group |
| Status (issuer's words) | Recommendation (RSL's own maturity label, not a W3C/IETF Recommendation) — Document RSL-SPEC-1.0, Category 'Industry Specification' | W3C Community Group Final Report; explicitly "not a W3C Standard nor is it on the W3C Standards Track" |
| Version | RSL 1.0 (2025-12-10) | CG-FINAL-tdmrep-20240510 (2024-05-10) |
| Form / transport | document format | well-known file |
| Found at | /rsl.xml | /.well-known/tdmrep.json |
| Implementation | shipping | shipping |
| Evidence | 2 verified | 2 verified |
| Primary use case | Control AI crawling and training use | Control AI crawling and training use |
| Last verified | 2026-10-23 (current) | 2026-10-23 (current) |
| Specification | https://rslstandard.org/rsl | https://www.w3.org/community/reports/tdmrep/CG-FINAL-tdmrep-20240510/ |
When to use which
- Choose Really Simple Licensing when your question is “What machine-readable license, price, and authorization terms govern how AI systems and crawlers may access or reuse a publisher's content?” and you accept its maturity: status "Recommendation (RSL's own maturity label, not a W3C/IETF Recommendation) — Document RSL-SPEC-1.0, Category 'Industry Specification'", implementation shipping.
- Choose Text and Data Mining Reservation Protocol when your question is “Has a rights holder reserved text-and-data-mining rights over this content, and what policy governs any permitted mining?” and you accept its maturity: status "W3C Community Group Final Report; explicitly "not a W3C Standard nor is it on the W3C Standards Track"", implementation shipping.
Read the full articles
- Really Simple Licensing: What machine-readable license, price, and authorization terms govern how AI systems and crawlers may access or reuse a publisher's content?
- Text and Data Mining Reservation Protocol: Has a rights holder reserved text-and-data-mining rights over this content, and what policy governs any permitted mining?