Copyright AI Content Licensing – Block AI Crawlers + Get Paid

robots.txt blocking (available now): Generates rules that block 100+ known AI crawlers. This is a voluntary standard - while OpenAI and Anthropic claim to respect it, industry data shows 12.9% of bots ignore robots.txt (up from 3.3% a year ago). Perplexity was caught bypassing blocks entirely. BUT even as a voluntary measure, it raises the legal and technical barrier and establishes clear notice of your access terms.
Machine-readable licensing (available now): Adds <meta name="ai-license"> tags and /ai-license.txt file using License Grammar v1.5. AI companies that want to operate legally can check your terms and pay your rates. If they don't, you have clear legal standing to enforce your rights - you explicitly stated your terms in a machine-readable format they can't claim to have missed.
HTTP 402 protocol (coming soon): When an AI bot hits your site, we'll serve a 402 "Payment Required" response with your licensing terms. Like robots.txt, this is voluntary - but it's newer, more standardized, and creates even clearer legal standing.

The key is we do BOTH technical blocking AND legal licensing. Most services only do one.
Will this mess up my SEO?
No - the plugin preserves Google, Bing, and other search engines. It only blocks AI training crawlers.

But let's be real: traditional SEO is dying anyway. In 2025, 60% of Google searches end without any click to external sites. When users do click, only 360 clicks per 1,000 searches go to the open web. Google now keeps 90% of its ad revenue internally (first time in a decade), with only 10% going to network publishers.

AI is replacing search - ChatGPT and Gemini answer questions using your content without sending traffic. This plugin helps you adapt: either block AI from using your content, or license it and get paid. Because traffic isn't coming back.
How do I actually get paid?
If you're licensing (not just blocking):

Click "Create account & connect" in plugin settings
Check your email for the magic link
Click the link - you're logged into dashboard.copyright.sh and sent back to WordPress
In the dashboard, add your payout method (PayPal, Venmo, Stripe)

Earnings accumulate under your domain even before you connect, so you won't lose revenue if you set up the plugin first and connect later.
What's private vs public distribution?
Private: AI uses your content to answer one person's question (like ChatGPT responding to a user)
Public: AI uses your content for commercial purposes or many users (like generating blog posts)

You can charge different rates for each. Most people charge more for public use.
Can I charge different amounts for different posts?
Yep. Set a global default in Settings, then override it on specific posts using the "AI License Override" meta box in the post editor. Good for premium content.
Do AI companies actually respect this?
The truth: it's mixed, and improving.

OpenAI and Anthropic officially respect robots.txt, but investigations by TollBit and Cloudflare have found evidence of bypassing on news sites. Perplexity was definitively caught using undisclosed IPs and spoofed user agents to bypass blocks. Meta's facebookexternalhit doesn't respect robots.txt at all (their position: it's not a "crawler").

BUT the trend is toward compliance because:

Legal risk: The EU AI Act now mandates opt-out respect and licensing documentation. Nine major publishers have signed licensing deals (News Corp $250M+, Reddit $60M/year). The legal precedent is clear.
Market incentives: AI companies that want premium content are now paying for it. They're realizing licensed data is legally safer and often higher quality than scraped data.
Technical barriers: While no blocking is perfect, robots.txt + HTTP 402 + machine-readable licenses create multiple layers that make unauthorized scraping legally riskier and technically harder.

Our approach: give you the tools to block, license, and build legal standing. Perfect enforcement doesn't exist yet, but we're building toward it.
Can I just block AI completely without licensing?
Yes. Set policy to "Deny" and enable the robots.txt blocker. You don't have to license anything - blocking is a completely valid choice.
Will this slow down my site?
No. The plugin adds one meta tag to your HTML head. Performance impact is basically zero. Works fine with all major caching plugins (WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache, etc).
What if I already have a robots.txt file?
The plugin's robots.txt feature is optional. If you manage robots.txt another way, just leave that feature disabled.
Which AI systems does this work with?
The plugin uses License Grammar v1.5, which is becoming the industry standard:

OpenAI (ChatGPT), Anthropic (Claude), Google (Gemini), xAI (Grok), Meta (Llama), Microsoft (Copilot), Perplexity, DeepSeek, Alibaba (Qwen), and 100+ other AI systems.

New AI companies are adopting the same standard, so your protection scales automatically.
Is this actually worth setting up?
Look, AI companies are scraping your site right now. You have three options:

This plugin handles options 2 and 3. Takes about 5 minutes to set up. Your call.
Does this protect my subdomains?
Short answer: Only if they're running WordPress with this plugin installed.

This plugin can only protect content served by WordPress. Here's how different subdomain scenarios work:

WordPress Multisite: Plugin works, but requires activation and configuration on each site in the network separately.
Separate WordPress installs (e.g., blog.example.com and shop.example.com): Install the plugin on each WordPress instance independently.
Non-WordPress subdomains (e.g., app.example.com running Node.js): Cannot be protected by this plugin. You'll need to manually add <meta name="ai-license"> tags and serve /ai-license.txt on those subdomains.

Why? WordPress plugins can only modify content that WordPress serves. A plugin installed on example.com has no access to inject HTML or serve files for subdomain.example.com - they're separate HTTP origins.