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Supertab Connect lets publishers define and enforce licensing terms for automated access to their content — crawlers, AI agents, and other bot traffic. Crawler operators use Supertab Connect to discover licensing terms and gain licensed access to content. Licensing Components:
  • RSL License: Declares what automated clients are permitted to do with or without a license.
  • Open Licensing Protocol (OLP): Grants licenses to authorized clients.
  • Crawler Authentication Protocol (CAP): Runs at the edge to validate licenses before crawlers reach your content.

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How It Works

Deploy a license.xml on your domain expressing licensing terms in the RSL standard format. Crawlers that want access obtain a license token from Supertab Connect and present it on every request. The Supertab Connect SDK – running in your CDN or application – validates the token in real time.

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Built on RSL

RSL (Really Simple Licensing) is an open standard for machine-readable content licensing. A publisher serves a license.xml file at their domain. Crawlers fetch and parse it, discover what access is available, and obtain license tokens to access content under the agreed terms. An RSL license answers four questions for any content scope: which URLs the rule applies to, which automated uses are permitted (search, ai-input, ai-index, ai-train), which uses are prohibited, and what commercial or legal conditions apply. 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rsl xmlns="https://rslstandard.org/rsl">
  <content url="/articles/*">
    <license>
      <permits type="usage">search</permits>
      <prohibits type="usage">ai-train</prohibits>
    </license>
  </content>
</rsl>
This says: classic search indexing is allowed for /articles/*, but training AI models on the content is not. Crawlers discover your license via a License: directive in robots.txt. From there, a compliant crawler fetches the license, evaluates the terms, and can request a token if licensed access is available. Content Licensing with RSL → covers the full license structure in detail — scope rules, vocabulary, legal elements, conflict resolution, and common patterns.

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Enforcement at the Edge

The Crawler Authentication Protocol (CAP) runs at your CDN edge to verify that crawlers hold a valid license before allowing access to your content. The Supertab Connect SDK handles the full lifecycle on every request identified as bot traffic:
  1. Detection — identify automated traffic via bot detection heuristics or custom logic
  2. Verification — validate the license token signature and claims
  3. Enforcement — allow or block based on token validity
  4. Recording — log the event for analytics and billing
Human browser traffic passes through without any of these steps. CAP operates entirely at the network layer — no footprint on your origin, no impact on human visitors. Tokens themselves are acquired through the Open Licensing Protocol (OLP), which handles client authentication and token issuance via Supertab Connect. Supertab Connect is also available as a Wordpress Plugin.

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Who Is Supertab Connect For?

Publishers are websites and API providers that want to license and monetize automated access to their content. You define licensing terms in the RSL Editor, publish license.xml at your domain, and deploy CAP enforcement at your CDN edge. Crawler Operators are organizations running bots, scrapers, or AI agents that need licensed access to content. You register your systems with Supertab Connect, obtain license tokens via the SDK, and present them when requesting protected content.

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Where to Start

If you are a publisher looking to license and protect your content, pick the deployment guide that matches your infrastructure:

Deploy in Your CDN

Serve your RSL license and enforce CAP at the edge — Fastly, CloudFront, Cloudflare, or any CDN.

Deploy on WordPress

Install the Supertab Connect plugin to handle RSL and CAP without CDN configuration.
If you are a crawler operator looking to access licensed content with your bots or AI agents:

Acquire Licenses for Protected Content

Register your system, obtain license tokens, and make authenticated requests.