Rights policy for encypher.com

The terms

Read us, quote us, cite us. Building a search index over this site, returning it in search results, and using it as retrieval input for a generative answer are all permitted at no cost. That covers RAGRAG: Retrieval-augmented generation: an AI system that fetches documents first, then writes its answer from them., grounding, and AI search summaries. We would rather be the source an answer engine reaches for than a blank space in its index.

Name us when you use us. The permission carries an attribution duty: identify Encypher as the source and link the page you drew from. In ODRLODRL: Open Digital Rights Language: a W3C format for writing usage terms that software can read. that is an odrl:attribute duty on each permission; in RSLRSL: Really Simple Licensing: a standard for publishing AI licensing terms that robots.txt can point to. it is <payment type="attribution">.

Training rights are reserved, not refused. Training or fine-tuning a model on this content is not covered by the open permission above. That is a commercial conversation rather than a closed door, and the licensing address is in every document. Under Article 4 of the EU Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive this reservation is expressed as tdm-reservation: 1, with a policy URL pointing at how to obtain permission.

This is notice. It is not a gate. Publishing terms is a declaration. Encypher is not an enforcement mechanism, here or in the product: nothing on this site inspects, authorises, or intercepts a crawler. The documents exist so that a system which wants to respect our terms can read them without a human in the loop.

The documents

One position, expressed in the three formats that crawlers and rights tooling actually look for. All three are generated from a single source. The TDM reservation is the broadest; this page and the RSL and ODRL documents spell out the open permissions.

/rights-policy/rslRSL 1.0application/rsl+xml

Really Simple Licensing 1.0, published as a Recommendation on December 10, 2025. Discoverable from the License directive in robots.txtrobots.txt: The file on a website that tells crawlers which pages they may fetch., a Link response header, and a link element in every page head.

/rights-policy/odrlW3C ODRL 2.2application/ld+json

The same terms in the language our rights engine evaluates. This document is the shape odrl-engine/0.5.0 reads, so it can be cleared against directly.

/rights-policy/tdmTDMRep policyapplication/ld+json

A profile of ODRL 2.2 defined by the W3C TDM Reservation ProtocolTDM reservation: A machine-readable statement that a rights holder does not allow text and data mining, including AI training.. Referenced from /.well-known/tdmrep.json and from the tdm-policy response header on every request.

How to find them without reading this page

• /robots.txt carries the RSL 1.0 License: directive and a Content-Signal: line in every crawler group, reading search=yes, ai-input=yes, ai-train=no.
• /.well-known/tdmrep.json is the TDMRep file a mining agent is expected to check before it starts.
• Every response carries tdm-reservation, tdm-policy, and a Link header with rel="license" for both the RSL and ODRL documents.
• Every page head carries the same two link rel="license" elements, for clients that parse HTML rather than headers.

Why we publish this

Encypher sells a deterministic W3C ODRL 2.2 rights engine and RSL 1.0 interchange to publishers. A company selling machine-readable licensing that does not publish its own is asking customers to take something on faith. These documents are the working example: same formats, same emitters, same engine.

The rights holder is Encypher Corporation. Questions about these terms, or about a training licence, go to sales@encypher.com. For how the engine works, see rights management.