Here’s the fact: AI models are drowning in lawsuits — billion-dollar ones. Anthropic might owe $1.5B over book claims, Midjourney’s in court for a Superman image, and more than 40 cases are lined up. It’s messy, it’s loud, and right now — nobody’s winning.
But plot twist: a brand-new system called Real Simple Licensing — backed by Reddit, Quora, Yahoo, Medium, and a crew of technologists who once built RSS — might actually fix it.
Here’s the pitch:
On the technical side: Publishers (think Reddit, Yahoo, Quora, Medium, WebMD, The Daily Beast — basically the internet’s go-to snack bar for AI) can code rules directly into their sites via robots.txt that tells AI crawlers what’s free, what’s off-limits, and what requires payment.
On the legal side: Instead of endless one-on-one deals, RSL creates a collective body that acts like a middleman. AI companies pay once, and the royalties get split among publishers—basically the same way music royalties work.
The upside? Even the smallest publishers — the ones too tiny to sue or negotiate — finally get a shot at getting paid.
The catch? Unlike music, you can’t prove exactly which page trained which model. So the payments will be based on rough estimates, not exact usage. It’s not perfect, but it’s way better than the wild west we’ve got now.
But then again, will AI labs actually play ball?
They’ve feasted on free data for years. Asking them to suddenly pay feels less like a business model shift, and more like rewriting internet culture.
Our take: RSL is the first real attempt to solve AI’s biggest legal headache. It’s smart, practical, and scalable — and it does two big things right:
Centralizes bargaining so publishers — especially small ones — can get paid.
Bakes licensing into the code AI already reads, which is a practical fix.
But let’s be real: tracking is still fuzzy, and AI labs have no natural reason to pay unless lawsuits, regulation, or PR pressure force their hand.
Bottom line: RSL could be the blueprint that saves AI from death-by-lawsuit… or just another shiny idea that AI labs quietly ignore while their lawyers keep busy.
Take a look at the full breakdown here.
