How the new RSL Standard could change the way AI uses your words
Will AI Pay Writers the Way Spotify Pays Musicians?
Medium’s new licensing standard might change how AI uses your words
Twenty years ago, musicians fought a battle they almost lost. Napster was giving away their songs for free, and record labels had no clue how to respond. Then came iTunes, Spotify, and ASCAP-like collectives that turned music into a streaming economy. Artists didn’t win outright, but at least the industry built a framework: royalties, credit, and a system (however flawed) for payment.
Today, writers are standing in the same place musicians once stood. Our words are being scraped, trained on, and remixed by AI companies — often without consent, credit, or compensation.
But something shifted this week.
Enter Really Simple Licensing (RSL)
In a new story, Medium’s CEO Tony Stubblebine announced that Medium, along with Reddit, Quora, Yahoo, and O’Reilly, is backing a new internet protocol: Really Simple Licensing (RSL).
Think of it as a “copyright tag” for the internet. RSL lets writers and platforms decide:
- No: AI companies can’t use your work if they give nothing back.
- Yes (with credit): They can use it if they cite you and send readers your way.
- Yes (with money): They can use it if they pay — and ideally, that money flows back to you.
Medium has already implemented the first version of RSL. That means your stories are blocked from training large AI models but can appear in AI-generated search results with a link back to you. In fact, Stubblebine noted that ChatGPT has become one of the fastest-growing sources of referral traffic to Medium — 4x more effective at converting readers into members than Google.
That’s no small shift.
Why This Looks Like Spotify for Writers
Musicians didn’t win the streaming wars by acting alone. They won because collectives — like ASCAP, BMI, and later streaming platforms — forced a standard into existence. Individual artists couldn’t negotiate with every bar, radio station, or app. But together, they created a system where money had to flow back to the creators.
RSL hints at the same future for writers. The protocol even includes a non-profit agency, the RSL Collective, designed to negotiate, collect, and distribute payments on behalf of the internet’s writers.
Stubblebine calls this approach “Negotiating as a Service.” In other words: you don’t need to fight OpenAI or Google alone. Medium (and others) can negotiate on behalf of thousands of writers at once.
The parallel to music is striking. Just as artists once fought for recognition and royalties in the streaming era, writers may now get their “Spotify moment” — a flawed but functional system that recognizes creative value in a world dominated by AI.
The Risk: Will it actually benefit us?
Musicians will tell you Spotify didn’t exactly make them rich. The system created royalties, but it also created middlemen, opaque deals, and per-stream payouts so tiny they became a running joke.
Writers could be heading toward the same future: a standardized system, yes — but one that favors platforms and AI giants more than individual creators. The danger isn’t that RSL won’t work; it’s that it could work too well while still paying us pennies.
That’s why Stubblebine emphasizes transparency. Medium, he says, doesn’t sell your data or stories. If money is made, the goal is to pass all of it back to writers.
If they stick to that promise, this could be a turning point.
Right now, RSL means two things for you as a writer on Medium:
- Your stories won’t be swallowed by AI training models.
- They can still show up in AI-generated results — with a link driving traffic back to your story.
That’s already happening. ChatGPT referrals are growing fast, while Google Gemini referrals remain weak. In this sense, OpenAI is currently giving writers more value than Google. (That sentence would have sounded absurd a year ago.)
The financial side — actual compensation — remains a future possibility. But with RSL in place, at least the framework exists. Without a standard, we’d have no seat at the table.
The Choice Ahead
Stubblebine points out that writers will soon have choices: opt in, opt out, or pick a middle ground. Some may reject AI entirely, even if it means fewer readers. Others may embrace the visibility and potential revenue.
It’s the same choice musicians faced: fight streaming on principle, or adapt and try to capture whatever share of royalties the system allows.
The next few years will determine whether RSL becomes our version of ASCAP… or just another system where the middlemen win.
We can’t stop AI from reshaping the internet. But for the first time, thanks to initiatives like RSL, writers aren’t just passive spectators. We have a framework, a negotiation tool, and — if platforms like Medium keep their promises — a path toward consent, credit, and compensation.
It won’t be perfect. But it’s better than silence.
This really might be the writers’ Spotify moment. The only question left: will we get paid fairly, or will history repeat itself?
