Archived version

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Some 31 UK websites, backed by the Movement for an Open Web (MOW), have added new “Search-Only Contracts” (SOC) to their website terms and conditions which prohibit the copying and repurposing of content by LLMs such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google Gemini.

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The terms seek to beef up existing robots.txt notices on websites, which are currently widely ignored by generative AI companies.

The contracts set out payment rates, typically £500 per article, for unauthorised website scraping which pave the way for future legal claims. In simple terms, they state that website users enter into a contract when they access a web page and agree not to copy and reuse content without permission.

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According to MOW the new system makes it easy for publishers to lodge small legal claims over unwanted scraping. All they need is proof that a particular LLM has taken their work, which is straightforward to establish via targeted questioning of the chatbot in question. The next stage is to issue the owner of the LLM with an invoice and then enforce payment at a local county court if the bill is not paid.

Claims can be started via the website Moneyclaim.gov.uk (at a cost of around £50) and are then decided at a local county (or small claims) court where it is normal for claimants to represent themselves.

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