Internet companies and publishers have introduced the "Really Simple Licensing" (RSL) standard to combat unauthorized AI content scraping. This open protocol enhances robots.txt by providing automated licensing terms for content usage, allowing publishers to receive compensation for AI interactions with their material. The RSL standard supports various compensation models, including pay-per-crawl and pay-per-inference.

The article discusses the distinctions between permissive and copyleft licenses in open source software and content, explaining the author's shift from favoring permissive licenses to copyleft due to changes in the software landscape and philosophical considerations. It emphasizes the importance of copyleft in encouraging open source development and addressing power imbalances in a rapidly evolving technological landscape.

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is exploring the implications of large language models (LLMs) on free software licensing, particularly regarding copyrightability and potential licensing issues of LLM-generated code. In a recent session, FSF representatives discussed the challenges posed by non-free models and the necessity for metadata and transparency in code submissions. The FSF is currently surveying free-software projects to better understand their positions on LLM output and is considering updates to the Free Software Definition rather than a new GPL version.